


i knew you

by acollectionofdaydreams



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Divergent, Communication, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Getting Back Together, M/M, Missing Scene, Season 3 AU, Timeline Shenanigans, the author does not respect canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-19
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:49:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 31,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22807372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/acollectionofdaydreams/pseuds/acollectionofdaydreams
Summary: Quentin Coldwater has never let go of anything he loved, and he certainly wouldn't be starting with Eliot. In which he has a conversation with Eliot after the mosaic that changes the course of their relationship and, consequently, the whole key quest.
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Comments: 58
Kudos: 304





	1. i didn't have it in myself to go with grace

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, a quick explanation. This was originally a oneshot titled 'if it's just me', but I just kind of kept writing it and here we are. Changing the title and adding onto it felt like the easiest way to continue this story. I hope you enjoy the changes I've made to the second half of s3!!

Quentin found himself sitting alone at the cottage, which was becoming a common occurrence as the key quest ramped up towards its uncertain end. When there was a plan, they were all hands on deck of course, but in the downtime between getting the next chapter of the book and figuring out what the hell it meant, there was a lot of this. Sitting around and thinking. Increasingly alone.

It’s not like he really blamed anyone for it. Everyone had a lot going on. Eliot and Margo were in Fillory with the fairy occupation, Kady was in no state to be company after Penny’s death, Alice was less than reliable these days, and Julia was figuring out her new goddess magic. Quentin was left with the key quest book and a lot of time alone to sit and think about it.

It’s just. He’d gotten used to not being alone lately. Or maybe that wasn’t right. _He_ hadn’t. The him who lived out the mosaic timeline had though, and that him was always there in the back of his mind, popping up at the most inopportune times with memories that hurt too much to dwell on. Like Teddy’s first steps or Arielle’s pretty smile or Eliot… well, memories of Eliot just hurt, full stop. 

He rolled over onto his back, tipping his head over the arm of the sofa so that he was looking at the cottage upside down. He knew he had to get a handle on this, but he wasn’t sure how. It was a pretty well known fact that he didn’t let go of the people he loved. Hell, it had completely destroyed his relationship with Alice and where was she now? He couldn’t live with that happening with Eliot. It just wasn’t an option. But what was an option then?

Maybe he could have accepted that it really was all a fluke or a lie or whatever Eliot was trying to imply. Their whole love and life and family. Maybe he could have almost swallowed that from anyone else, but the thing was, Quentin _knew_ Eliot. He probably knew him better than anyone else in the entire world, and that wasn’t an arrogant assumption. He knew for a fact that after fifty years, there hadn’t been a single secret left between the two of them. 

And that’s why he knew that Eliot was full of shit when he said he didn’t love him.

But what did that matter when Eliot was hellbent on not choosing him this time around? 

He groaned into his hands as he reached the same dead end he’d been circling around for weeks.

“I take it you haven’t had a breakthrough on the next key yet?”

He jumped in surprise at the sound of Julia’s voice in the quiet room. He still hadn’t gotten used to her being able to just fucking appear like that.

“Sorry,” she said, barely hiding the smile in her voice as she circled around the sofa to sit next to him.

He pulled back his feet to make space for her and looked at her over the top of his knees. She looked good or at least a lot better than she’d been lately. She was practically glowing with her new powers, and it was kind of beautiful to see.

“Is this about the key or something else?” she asked, giving him a thoughtful look.

He gave her a noncommittal noise in response as he looked away from her discerning eyes. It wasn’t just the key, but it also was the key and the quest and his dad and about a million other things too.

“Is it about Alice?” she asked.

“No,” he replied, “Alice and me are… well, it’s over between us. She’s doing whatever she’s doing, and I’ve moved on.”

“You’re not lying,” she replied, and she sounded surprised about it.

He turned to glare at her. He said, “Stop reading my mind or whatever.”

“I’m not reading your mind,” she said, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips. “It’s more like I can feel how you feel. Your pain and frustration and… longing?”

He snapped his jaw shut and exhaled heavily.

“Look, you don’t have to talk to me about it,” she started.

He said, “It’s not that I don’t want to talk about it with you, Jules. I just don’t think I can talk about it, period.”

Well, there’s one person he could talk to about it, but that hadn’t gone over spectacularly well. 

“Okay, Q,” she replied carefully. “Just know that I’m here for you, okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. Then he turned to look at her. “Thanks.”

She smiled at him and reached out to pat his knee. She said, “You’re welcome.”

She got up and wandered off in the general direction of the kitchen, and he settled back into the sofa cushions, left to his overthinking again.

The next time he opened his eyes, the cottage had gotten dark around him. Maybe his overthinking had turned into a nap somewhere in the middle. Well, he’d probably needed it. Sleep had been weird ever since he’d gotten back from the mosaic or hadn’t gone or whatever. He wasn’t used to sleeping alone anymore. It was another one of those instances where those memories kept messing with him, asserting the experiences that he’d never actually lived. He might not have spent fifty years sleeping next to someone in this body, but this body was the one being kept awake at night because there was too much space to his left.

He glanced over at the key quest book, still lying open on the table in front of him, and yawned. He figured there wasn’t going to be any progress there for the night if he hadn’t managed to get anywhere yet. It would probably be more helpful for him to go to bed at this point and try to take on the quest in the morning. So, he closed the book and fumbled his way through the dark common room until he made it to the stairs.

It was only when he reached the top of the landing that he saw something that gave him pause. He’d thought that everyone else was either asleep or gone for the night, but there was a light on in one of the rooms and a door cracked. He took a quiet step down the hall to get a closer look and froze when he realized whose room it was. Eliot’s. 

Wards down or not, he knew that none of the physical kids would dare to trespass into Eliot’s space without his permission, so that meant there could only be one person inside. He probably should have taken that knowledge down the hall with him into his room and shut the door, locking it behind him for good measure. Of course he didn’t though. There wasn’t a world in which he would walk away from Eliot, and besides, if he was here, there might be something wrong.

He approached the door slowly and heard the sounds of someone shuffling things around inside. He brought his hand up for a tentative knock, and the sounds from within the room stopped immediately. 

“Hello?” Eliot called.

Quentin took a deep breath and steadied himself before replying, “It’s me.”

A beat of silence.

“Oh, well you can come in then.”

He pushed the door open and slipped inside. Eliot was standing next to his bed, an open suitcase in front of him half filled with an assortment of his belongings.

“What are you doing here?” Quentin asked.

“I figured if I’m staying in Fillory for the foreseeable future, I might as well get the rest of my things,” he said. He gestured around the room as he continued, “I mean, who knows how long Brakebills is going to be here if…”

If they didn’t get magic back. Quentin knew that was the end of the sentence.

“Yeah, that makes sense,” he agreed.

He was still standing by the door as he shifted his weight from one foot to the other, glancing around the half empty room. Eliot still hadn’t looked at him.

“El,” he said.

His voice came out smaller than he’d intended, and maybe that was what got Eliot’s attention, because he finally looked up.

“Yeah?”

Quentin swallowed around the lump in his throat. He asked, “Are you okay, really?”

Eliot frowned at him. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” he asked. “I mean, I’d be a lot better if magic were turned on and if there wasn’t a fairy hand up my ass, but other than that.”

“Nevermind,” Quentin said. “It was stupid.”

He shuffled backwards a step, intending to excuse himself to his own room, but Eliot turned around and took a step towards him.

“No, something’s bothering you, and that’s not stupid,” he said.

There was just so much gentle concern in his voice, and it broke something loose inside Quentin’s chest.

“Q, what is it? You can talk to me,” he continued.

“No, I can’t,” he replied, surprised by the passion in his own voice, “because if you loved me half as much as I love you, you wouldn’t be fucking okay right now.”

Eliot froze, his expression stock still, and Quentin immediately regretted saying it. They’d had this conversation, and he knew it led to nowhere good.

“Q, I...” he said, his mouth hanging open as the words got caught on the way out. 

“Forget it,” Quentin said. He turned around. “I shouldn’t have said anything. I know how you feel.”

“No, wait,” Eliot said. Quentin paused but didn’t turn around, waiting for Eliot to continue. “You know that I love you, but we talked about this.”

There was that spark again lighting up something inside him.

“Did we?” he asked, spinning around again. “Because the way I remember it, I talked, and you iced me out.”

The look Eliot was giving him wasn’t born of anger, not even close. It was more like he was begging, absolutely pleading, with Quentin to let this go. To drop it. Then it smoothed over into something unreadable.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “If you already know how I feel, then what’s the point in bringing it up again?”

Quentin wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him. He’d never been so frustrated with someone in his life.

“Because you’re _lying_ ,” he half shouted, “either to me or to yourself, and neither of us deserves that.”

Something in Eliot’s expression cracked, just a little bit. In a low voice, he said, “That’s not fair.”

“No, do you know what’s not fair?” Quentin demanded, fully on a roll now that he’d opened the floodgates. “I can’t eat or sleep. I can barely even fucking _breathe_ because the love of my life for fifty years broke up with me! If it weren’t for the quest giving me something to do, then I’d be a goddamn wreck right now.”

“That is not what happened!” Eliot argued, shock clear in his voice.

Good. Quentin had wanted to shock him. It was better than the non-reactions Eliot had been giving him.

“What the fuck do you call it then?” he asked.

“It wasn’t us,” Eliot argued, a desperate defiance in his voice. “You know as well as I do that Margo stopped that timeline from happening, and whatever happened there, that wasn’t you and me.”

“Yeah, not when we have a choice, right?” Quentin asked.

Eliot visibly blanched at his own words thrown back at him, and Quentin selfishly felt a little good about that. If they hurt Eliot half as much as they had hurt Quentin then maybe they were getting somewhere.

“Just tell me the truth, Eliot,” he said. “If you really want me to walk away right now, I will. I won’t force myself on you. I just need to know that this is really what you want because unless you were just pretending to be in love with me all that time, then I don’t see how it can be.”

Eliot stared at him.

“How fucking dare you,” he replied.

Quentin was a little surprised by the outburst, but he squared his shoulders, refusing to back down. 

“I loved you until the day I died,” Eliot continued, his voice trembling with the pure emotion in it, “and if you didn’t know that, then I…”

“Then what, Eliot?” Quentin interrupted. “Because you rejected me! What else am I supposed to believe right now?”

Eliot bit his lip and looked to the side of the room, his eyes growing watery.

“You’re supposed to know that I’m afraid!” he said, his voice breaking at the end.

Quentin took half a step forward before stopping himself. Eliot was still standing there, looking absolutely stricken now, as he swayed in the middle of the room. He looked like he was going to fall over with the weight of whatever had overcome him, but Quentin still wasn’t sure that his comfort would be welcomed.

Instead, he said, “Eliot.”

Eliot turned back to look at him then as he walked backwards, letting his knees hit the bed until he was sitting down on the edge of it.

“What are you so afraid of?” Quentin asked him.

Eliot laughed, and he just looked so sad. He said, “Of fucking things up? Of you realizing that you made a mistake now that you have other options and leaving me?”

Quentin couldn’t stop himself from walking forward then and crushing Eliot against him. He brought one hand to the back of Eliot’s head and rubbed the other between his shoulder blades. Eliot let out a shuddering breath against his stomach as he fisted his hands into the back of his shirt. Quentin tipped his head down to press his lips against the top of Eliot’s head.

“El, honey, I would never leave you,” he said.

“You say that now,” Eliot replied, his voice coming out muffled against Quentin’s shirt, “but what about when Alice comes back around? Or when you meet someone else one day who isn’t a trainwreck of a human being? I’m poison, Q, and you deserve better than that.”

Quentin brought his hands up to gently cup Eliot’s jaw and guide his gaze upwards until they were looking at each other. Eliot looked utterly miserable, his eyes red rimmed and swollen from unshed tears.

“You’re not poison,” he said, looking Eliot in the eyes to make sure he was listening. “You’re it for me, Eliot. I’m never going to love anybody else as much as I love you, and if you don’t want me anymore, then that’s something I’ll have to find a way to live with.” 

A single tear spilled over onto Eliot’s cheek, and Quentin reached his thumb up to wipe it away. Eliot closed his eyes for a second before opening them again to look up at him. 

Quentin continued, “But if you’re pushing me away because you think you’re not what I need, then you have to know that I’m not going to let you do that. Not after what we’ve been through.”

Eliot stared at him, stunned silence all over his face as he tried to figure out what to say, before he fully and unexpectedly broke down. Quentin had never really seen him cry all that often, but he was practically hysterical now as he sobbed into Quentin’s shirt. Quentin sunk down onto his knees so that he could wrap him in his arms, and Eliot responded by burying his face in his neck and gripping his shoulders tightly.

“Oh god, Q, I’m so sorry,” he cried.

“It’s okay,” Quentin whispered, rubbing his hand across Eliot’s back, the movement deliberately gentle. “It’s okay, baby, I’m right here.”

“I don’t deserve you,” Eliot replied.

Quentin squeezed him tighter. He said, “This isn’t about who deserves what. I love you.”

Eliot leaned back then to look at him and rub a hand under his eyes, wiping away the tears staining his cheeks.

“I love you too,” he said, his voice coming out hoarse. “You know that, right?”

Quentin nodded his head. He said, “Yeah, I do.”

Eliot nodded his head too and, slowly, he leaned in until they were so close that they were sharing the same breath. He paused there and whispered, “Can I kiss you?”

Quentin responded by closing the distance. 

As soon as their lips touched, Eliot exhaled in relief, breath hot against him. Quentin dug his fingers into Eliot’s curls, the action feeling as familiar as breathing after a lifetime of doing it. He sighed against Eliot’s mouth, lips parted and allowing Eliot to slip his tongue inside, sliding it along Quentin’s. They kissed each other desperately, hands in hair and searching for skin like they were dying men and the only cure was being as close to each other as possible.

After an immeasurable amount of time, Eliot pulled away, but only by a breath.

“Tell me what you need,” he said against Quentin’s lips. “Tell me how to make this up to you because I love you so much, and I’m not walking away again. Never.”

Quentin leaned forward to chase his lips and felt Eliot relax against his touch. Then he pulled away and said, “I don’t think we’re done talking about this, but for tonight, just stay with me?”

Eliot nodded, his forehead brushing against Quentin’s. He said, “I can do that.”

So Eliot let Quentin lead him back to his bedroom and undress him and curl up against his chest under the covers. He held Quentin a little too tightly to be comfortable, and they both kept trying to kiss whatever skin they could reach instead of bothering with falling asleep, but Quentin couldn’t have cared less. He needed it, and he thought maybe Eliot did too. Nothing was fixed, but one thing was maybe a little less broken. That was something he could live with for now.


	2. everything has changed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> as i said in the notes of chapter 1, this is a continuation of what used to be the oneshot 'if it's just me'. i've actually been working on this story in secret for months and it's almost completely written or at least planned out. i've really enjoyed fleshing this little idea out into a real story, and i hope you'll all love it too! i've made some plot changes in this chapter already with much bigger ones to come. i'm eager to know what you think!

Waking up the next morning was like waking up in a different world. To Quentin, it simultaneously felt entirely familiar and shockingly foreign.

The familiar part was the warm body next to him, arms and legs still tangled with his in sleep. Waking up next to Eliot was like breathing at this point, the only acceptable default state of the universe.

The shock came when he remembered where, and when, they were. His room in the Physical Kids Cottage was a far cry from the bedroom they’d shared for decades in Fillory. This room meant they were in a magicless world, about a century in the future from their previous life together, and they were back on the quest. They weren’t alone this time either. That much was evident from the voices floating up the stairs, Kady and Alice's bickering specifically. Quentin missed the days when they all had silencing wards on their rooms and could exist in a house full of twenty something’s without constantly getting on each other’s nerves. He also missed the days of waking up to only the sounds of birdsong and Eliot’s breath next to him, but that memory was a little less clear.

Eliot stirred next to him, and Quentin rolled over onto his side to face him. When he opened his eyes, he took about a second to become aware of his surroundings before reaching out to tuck Quentin’s hair behind his ear, his touch devastatingly soft.

“Hey,” Quentin said, his voice quiet in the space between them.

“Hey,” Eliot replied.

He leaned forward to press a chaste kiss to Quentin’s lips and sighed happily as he pulled away. Quentin reached for his hand and tangled their fingers together before he asked the question that was on his mind.

“You aren’t freaking out about this, are you?”

Eliot stared at him for just a moment before squeezing his hand.

“I don’t think so,” he answered. “I’m probably going to later, but right now I’m good.”

Quentin smiled at him, which made Eliot’s expression soften.

“Good, because same,” Quentin replied.

They settled into a comfortable silence, fingers still laced together, as the reality of their overall situation settled over them. There was still so much going on. They had three keys left to get, the Library was up to no good, and Fillory wasn’t exactly stable last time Quentin had checked. And yet, there was this.

“I don’t want you to leave again,” he admitted. 

Eliot looked down at their hands then back up at him. He said, “I don’t either.”

“Then don’t,” Quentin said, as if it were that simple.

Eliot gave him a sad smile. They both knew nothing was that simple.

“I didn’t exactly get around to telling you the full story about what I was doing back here last night,” he said.

“Then tell me now,” Quentin replied.

Eliot settled onto his back, still keeping hold of Quentin’s hand, and sighed.

“The cliffnotes version is: I found out that Fray wasn’t actually my daughter, we blackmailed the fairies into revealing themselves to the public, and then Margo and I were swiftly and violently overthrown.”

Quentin sat up on his elbows to look at him. He said, “Oh my god, where is Margo right now?”

“On the Muntjac. We might have stolen it,” Eliot explained. “I was actually sent back here for supplies and decided to make a pit stop at the cottage. We’re kind of on the run.”

“Well shit,” Quentin said, leaning back into his pillow.

“Yeah,” Eliot agreed. “What’s been happening here?”

“We got the fourth key out of the Underworld, Penny is officially dead I guess, and Alice is apparently on team Library now, whatever that means,” Quentin recapped.

“Well shit,” Eliot echoed his earlier sentiments.

Quentin laughed before bringing Eliot’s hand up to kiss his knuckles. It felt so good to just be able to do that again. He said, “I have a proposal.”

Eliot quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Little early for that, don’t you think?” he asked.

“Shut up,” Quentin laughed, giving Eliot’s hand a hard squeeze. Eliot grinned at him. 

“I’m all ears,” he said sincerely.

“Okay, so what if I take the key quest book, and we go back to Fillory together?” Quentin asked. “I still haven’t figured out the fifth key, and a change of scenery might help me think.” 

Eliot seemed hesitant as he said, “I’d love to have you there, but are you sure that’s a good idea? Your face is on a wanted poster too, and I don’t want…”

“El,” Quentin interrupted, “you can’t protect me from everything. If you and Margo are in trouble, I want to help.”

Eliot didn’t look happy about it, but Quentin watched as he warred with his instinct to tell Quentin to stay and his desire to not let him out of his sight. It was a familiar predicament between the two of them from a lifetime of Eliot’s instinctive overprotectiveness over Quentin and their family. He honestly wondered how either of them had gotten this far since the mosaic without it rearing its head, even with Eliot steadfastly pushing him away.

“Okay,” he finally settled. “Let’s get breakfast, and then we can grab the book and get back to Margo.”

Quentin leaned in to peck his lips. He said, “Thank you.”

He meant thank you for trusting me, for not running away from this, for loving me enough to let me stay. He thought Eliot probably heard all of that though. They weren’t quite out of the woods yet as far as figuring out what all of this meant between them here and now, but for once, Quentin wasn’t worried about that. They had time. 

Eliot chased his mouth as he pulled away, which led to Quentin landing on his back, with Eliot half on top of him. At least this was one part they didn’t have to discuss to be on the same page about. He sighed as Eliot covered his body with his own, bracketing his arms on either side of Quentin’s head.

“I’ve missed you so much,” he said quietly, brushing his nose against Quentin’s.

Quentin placed one hand on Eliot’s hips and trailed the other down his stomach between them, stopping just as he dipped his fingers under his waistband. He dug his fingers into the soft skin of Eliot’s hipbones and sighed at how that caused Eliot to drop his head and mouth along his jawline.

“Me too,” he agreed.

Eliot grabbed his hand and guided it lower, and they both tensed and then relaxed into the familiar feeling as Quentin wrapped his hand around him through his underwear. 

“Do you think we have time for a quickie?” Eliot asked in his ear, literally zero shame in the way he was already slowly thrusting his hips into Quentin’s hand. 

“You’re insufferable,” Quentin replied, though he was smiling as he said it. “I forgot about how horny you get when you’re in a relationship.”

His mind got caught on the word ‘relationship’ as it came out. They hadn’t actually discussed that label yet, but Eliot didn’t seem to be bothered by it. Instead, he gently moved Quentin’s hand away so that he could grind down against his hips instead, a smug look growing on his face as the action made Quentin moan involuntarily.

“I don’t seem to recall you complaining,” Eliot said.

“No-nope,” Quentin stuttered, not quite remembering what he was supposed to be complaining about anymore. “No complaints here.”

“Good,” Eliot replied.

He sat up, gathered Quentin’s hands in his own, and brought them up to rest on the pillow over his head, pinning them there with ease as he lowered his mouth back down to Quentin’s neck. Quentin gasped at the feeling of lips and teeth grazing the sensitive skin.

“Let me take care of you, baby,” Eliot whispered against his skin. “It’s been too long.”

They did have several important things to do and several friends who were probably wondering just where they’d gotten off to, but Quentin couldn’t bring any of those excuses to mind at that moment. So, he just nodded his head and raised his hips to meet Eliot’s once again.

“Yes, please,” he said.

By the time they came downstairs, they were wearing matching smiles and giving off an undeniable well-fucked vibe. Eliot’s idea of a quickie had turned into them taking a shower together afterwards which turned into something more than a quickie, so they’d already burned through upwards of an hour and a half of the morning. Quentin couldn’t find it in him to mind though. It was already a hell of a lot better than the day he had planned for himself, which mostly involved staring at the ceiling alone and trying to interpret the nonsense code the book had given them for the next key.

The book was in his messenger back locked in a drawer in the common room. Eliot wandered off into the kitchen to see what food was left in the pantry while Quentin went to fetch it. He decided to just grab the whole bag, thinking it best not to leave the keys lying around in the cottage for anyone to find, and had turned around to make his way back to Eliot when he came face to face with Kady instead.

“I need the truth key,” she said bluntly.

“Kady…” he started.

“Look, I know Penny probably didn’t make it out of the Underworld, but I just need to check again,” she told him.

Quentin knew that if Penny hadn’t shown up from the Underworld Library yet then there was almost zero chance of him showing up now, and he had a feeling Kady knew that too. He couldn’t shake the feeling though that if it were Eliot, he’d never stop looking for him. So, he took pity on her and sat the bag down on the table to retrieve the key. 

“Q, it looks like our only options are cereal or oatmeal,” Eliot said, clear disdain in his voice as he rounded the corner from the kitchen. “ _But_ I was thinking I could take you to this cute little bakery in SoHo if you think we have time before…”

He paused when he got into the room, raising an eyebrow at Quentin pulling out the truth key with his sleeve, but Quentin just shook his head at him as discreetly as he could. Kady looked over her shoulder.

“Oh, hey,” she said, “didn’t know you were here.”

“Just making a detour,” he said.

Kady gave them both an odd look before seemingly deciding she didn’t care enough about whatever was going on to ask. She simply accepted the truth key from Quentin, doubling over as the nausea from its effects hit her, and took off searching through the cottage. Quentin pulled out the quest book while he waited and flipped it open to the newest chapter. If he was honest, it was bothering him that he still couldn’t make any sense of it. It wasn’t even in any kind of recognizable language.

“Here, let me look at it,” Eliot offered.

Quentin stepped aside for Eliot to look at the book over his shoulder and leaned back into his chest as he slipped an arm around Quentin’s waist. 

“What is that?” Alice asked.

Quentin tensed as he looked up and spotted her standing in the doorway. He felt Eliot’s fingers dig into his hip. 

“It’s nothing,” he replied.

Alice strode over to them quickly though and tried to glance at the book. Quentin slammed it shut and held it against his chest.

“Let me see it,” she demanded.

“No,” he replied. 

She huffed and placed her hands on her hips. She said, “So you trust Kady with the truth key, but you don’t trust me with the book?”

“At least I know what Kady wants,” he said. Alice looked somewhere between hurt and annoyed at that. He explained, “Kady wants to talk to Penny, but you? I have no idea what you’re doing with the Library.”

She glared at him, her lips pressed together. He took her silence as a confirmation of his point.

“Well, you should still let me look at it because I know what it is,” she told him.

“Really?” Eliot asked dryly, and Alice looked up at him like she was just noticing he was there. “We’re supposed to believe that after you looked at it for two seconds?”

“Yes,” she replied stubbornly. “It’s music.”

Quentin glanced up at Eliot, who still looked distrusting but shrugged at him nonetheless. Alice held out her hand, and he reluctantly gave her the book. She hurried over to the piano and sat down, propping it up in front of her with the strange looking code opened. The two of them followed close behind, not willing to let her go very far with it.

“It’s a medieval scale,” she explained.

She sat her hands on the keys and began to play, delicate yet off-key sounds floating through the room. Quentin winced. He was no expert in medieval music, but it didn’t exactly sound pleasant.

“Are you sure that’s right?” Eliot asked.

“Yes,” she snapped at him.

“Then you’re an idiot.”

They all looked up at Kady’s voice as she re-entered the room. She dropped the truth key roughly onto the table next to Quentin’s bag and walked over to them.

“The medieval scale didn’t start at C,” she explained, “so that’s an A.”

She gestured for Alice to move, which she did with an irritated huff. Kady sat down on the piano bench and began to play it at the adjusted scale, which admittedly sounded a lot better than Alice’s attempt. Quentin held his breath as she seemed to reach the end of the notes, and for a minute nothing happened. Then _everything_ happened.

The cottage practically exploded to life. There were bodies everywhere dancing and singing to loud pop music reverberating through the room. It was a party wild enough to give Eliot and Margo’s trysts a run for their money. Worryingly, the piano, along with the quest book, had disappeared entirely.

“What the fuck,” said Eliot’s voice from his left. 

Quentin turned his head to look at him, no words coming out as he shook his head and shrugged. Eliot’s hand reached for his on instinct, and Quentin took hold of it.

“Hey! You guys made it!”

The four of them turned around to see Josh Hoberman standing at the top of the stairs decked out in a suit that made him look like some kind of pimp, which was frankly a disturbing image. All of the partygoers in the cottage cheered as he descended like they’d been waiting for him to arrive though.

“Is everyone else seeing this?” Kady asked.

“Uh huh,” Quentin replied.

“Thank God,” she said.

Josh swiped a tray of drinks from someone and danced his way over to them.

“Drink up!” he shouted. “Because magic’s back, baby!”

He sat the drinks down on a nearby table and immediately turned around to join an ongoing conga line. Eliot reached for one of the blue cocktails, but Kady slapped his hand.

“No one is drinking anything here,” she told them.

Eliot halfheartedly glared at her, but Quentin secretly thought she probably had a point. Whatever was going on here was decidedly not any kind of reality adjacent to the one they’d been living in moments before. Just as he was processing that, Alice spoke up from behind him.

“Wait, did Josh just say magic is back?”

Quentin turned his head to look at her because she was right. 

“Holy shit, yeah he did,” he agreed. He immediately brought his hands up to do a minor spell and watched with wide eyes as fireworks shot into the air above his head. He stumbled back a bit, in shock that it had actually worked.

Eliot asked, “Okay, but how?”

“I don’t know,” Kady said, her tone sounding more skeptical than impressed, “but we need to find the others.”

She stalked over to the entrance of the cottage only to find that there was no door there. It had been replaced by a painting of Josh, of all things.

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” she muttered. “I’ll just blow a hole in the damn wall then.”

She raised her hands in formation to send a blast of battle magic, but incredibly, nothing happened. She glared down at her hands in confusion.

“Something’s wrong,” she surmised.

Alice walked over to her and said, “Here, let me try.”

Kady scoffed but stepped aside for Alice to raise her hands to do the same spell, and again, nothing happened.

“I don't get it,” Alice said. “If magic is back, that should have worked.”

As soon as the words left her mouth, the music stopped. Everyone at the party turned to look at them, and they didn’t look happy.

Quentin said, “Um, guys, I think we have a more immediate problem.”

Josh appeared out of nowhere again, and the party slowly resumed its wild pace as he laughed and encouraged everyone to get back to dancing. Once he’d succeeded, he walked over to the four of them.

“If you’re gonna be here, you have to party. No bad vibes allowed,” he said sternly, though he was still holding a cocktail with a little umbrella in it, so it wasn’t like it was easy to take him seriously.

“Yeah, we’re not really in the partying mood,” Eliot replied.

The music stopped again.

“He’s just kidding!” Josh laughed.

The music started up again.

Quentin was seriously starting to get Inception vibes with all the menacing glares thrown their way anytime they pointed out the dreamlike reality they seemed to have fallen into. He knew he’d probably get an eyeroll or two for making that comparison aloud, so he kept it to himself. However, it did seem like Josh had some control over this situation, which was another bizarre part of it.

Kady asked, “Okay, Hoberman, what the fuck is going on and why don’t these people want us to leave?” 

Josh yelled over the noise of the crowd, “Why would you want to leave?!” 

As if that were a sufficient answer, he wandered off again, leaving them alone to watch bewildered as the party raged on around them.

“Normally I would be in favor of partying to avoid our problems,” Eliot said, “but this is starting to feel like the bad kind of acid trip.”

Eliot was right. Something was very wrong, and it wasn’t just the weird party of it all. Quentin was looking out the windows across from them trying to gauge what time it was, but he couldn’t actually see anything. It was just light outside with no defining shapes breaking it up. It gave him the eerie feeling that they weren’t really anywhere at all.

“We need to get Josh alone,” Quentin said. “If anyone here knows something, it’s gonna be him.”

Alice asked, “How do we do that without getting everyone’s attention?” 

Quentin was drawing a blank as his gaze swept the room. They couldn’t do anything to bring attention to how seriously weird this all was without the partiers turning on them. They were going to have to cause a distraction of some kind.

“Someone has to stay and party with them while the rest of us talk to Josh,” he said.

Eliot patted his arm as he stepped around him. He said, “Oh, I can handle that. Partying was my unofficial discipline.”

“No,” Kady said. Eliot paused, and they all looked at her. “You guys go get answers out of Josh. I’ve got this part covered.”

Quentin exchanged looks with Alice and Eliot, but none of them dared to argue with her. Instead, they watched as she cast a spell, and then suddenly her outfit turned into a shimmering gold dress. The music in the room stopped and slowly changed into something smoother as she sauntered across the room. It was safe to say that all eyes were on her, which is what they’d asked for.

“Goddamn, if I wasn’t so gay,” Eliot remarked, his mouth hanging half open as he watched Kady’s transformation.

Quentin snorted and elbowed him, which made Eliot turn back to him with a teasing smile. Alice was giving the two of them a very strange look, which is what snapped Quentin’s attention back to the situation at hand. 

Looking awkwardly between them, he said, “Come on, let’s grab Josh.”

They spotted Josh on the edge of the crowd smiling as he watched Kady dance, and Alice turned back to him and Eliot.

“You two go wait upstairs,” she said, “I can get Josh up there.”

They did as she said, because Alice may have been acting shady but she seemed pretty sure of herself here, and they picked the first bedroom at the top of the stairs at random to settle into. It looked like any other room in the Cottage, and Eliot went immediately for the chair at the desk and pulled it into the middle of the room.

“What’s that for?” Quentin asked him.

Eliot turned around and dug through the drawers in the standard issue dresser instead of answering, and Quentin watched him emerge with a tie in each hand.

“Restraints,” Eliot finally said.

Quentin watched him toss the ties onto the back of the chair.

He asked, “Is it weird that I’m a little turned on right now?”

Eliot laughed in surprise at his question, and Quentin grinned at him, daring him to play along.

“Oh, we are definitely revisiting that later when we’re alone,” Eliot told him.

And yeah, he had a point that they were very much not alone if the raging party downstairs was anything to go on.

Just before he could chase that idea any further though, the door burst open behind him. He spun around to see Josh walking backwards into the room with Alice following behind him.

“I can’t say I haven’t thought about it,” he was saying, “but I never expected you to make such a bold move.”

Alice pushed him down into the chair, and Eliot went to work pinning his wrists behind his back. Alice quickly shut the door behind her, and Quentin circled the chair to stand next to her.

“How did you get him up here?” he asked.

Alice didn’t look at him as she straightened her shoulders and said, “I told him I wanted to have sex with him.”

Quentin couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him at the blunt way she said such an absurd sentence, and she cut her eyes at him with an amused glint that made her look a little more like herself than she’d looked in weeks. 

“What?” she asked. “It worked.”

“I guess it did,” he conceded.

Eliot finished up his work and took a step back as Josh squirmed against the makeshift handcuffs.

With no preamble at all, Alice asked, “What the fuck, Josh?” 

Neither of them could have said it any better, so Quentin and Eliot simply stood next to her as she glared at him.

He gave the ties a sharp tug.

“Is this something you guys are into?” he asked. “Because I’m not judging, but I never pegged you for the BDSM type. I mean, Alice I can see, but...”

Quentin interrupted him, “Oh my god, please shut up.”

Eliot laughed under his breath next to him and placed a hand on his shoulder as he stepped forward to reply, “Please, if this was foreplay, you’d know it. Now, would you like to tell us what all of this is about?”

Quentin felt himself blush, and Alice looked similarly scandalized next to him. Eliot, however, was seemingly having the time of his life judging by his amused grin.

“What do you mean?” Josh asked. “I told you guys. Magic is back, so we’re partying!”

“Magic isn’t back,” Quentin said, furrowing his brow. “We’re still on the quest right now, and it sent us here,” he looked around the room, “wherever here is.”

Eliot asked, “And what exactly are you doing in the Physical Kids Cottage? Aren’t you a nature student?”

Quentin was about to ask Eliot if that was really what he was concerned about when he realized the point he was making. It _was_ weird that Josh would be throwing a party here when he didn’t even live here.

“Everyone knows the best parties are at the Cottage,” Josh replied.

Eliot said, “I mean, he has a point.”

Quentin rolled his eyes and said, “Fine, whatever, we’re here now, and apparently we need your help to get the key. So what is this place?”

“What do you mean? It’s the Physical Kids Cottage,” Josh replied incredulously.

“No, it isn’t,” Eliot said, “because we were just in the real Physical Kids Cottage, and it wasn’t party central.”

“Then how did you get here?” Josh asked.

“It was the piano,” Alice realized. She looked to Quentin and Eliot. “Kady played the song from the key quest book, and it brought us here. Maybe this is some kind of alternate timeline or pocket world?”

“You might be onto something,” Eliot agreed as he took a more careful look around the room.

It made a certain kind of sense, and it would mean that this wasn’t some bizarre collective hallucination or something. He and Eliot had recently dealt very intimately with the concept of alternate universes after all. Whatever this was, it was almost definitely part of the quest. 

“So, the key is most likely here somewhere,” Quentin realized, “and I’m guessing we have to pass some sort of test to get it and get out of here.”

“That sounds about right,” Eliot said, seemingly thinking along the same lines as he was.

Just then, Kady burst through the door and closed it behind her, getting all of their attention. She asked, “So, what’s the deal?”

She was changed back into her much more Kady-like clothes, but the party was still raging downstairs.

“Wait, shouldn’t someone still be distracting them?” Quentin asked.

She brushed him off and said, “No, they’re good, trust me.”

“Illusion spell,” Josh said, his tone oddly approving. “Clever.”

Quentin walked over to Eliot while Alice filled her in on what they’d learned so far.

“Gotta love a classic puzzle quest,” he quipped, only to get a snort from Eliot in response.

“God, don’t, it’s way too soon,” Eliot groaned. Then he hooked his arm around Quentin’s waist as he leaned down to whisper, “Besides, I don’t think the others would appreciate some of our problem solving methods. Remember that time we got drunk and fucked on the…”

“Eliot!” Quentin interrupted him.

Eliot laughed and opened his mouth to say something else when Kady spoke up first.

“That’s it!” she exclaimed. “E!”

Eliot and Quentin immediately separated as they spun around to see what she was talking about.

“The scale from the book started at A,” she explained, “and the people downstairs kept asking me to sing in E even though it sounded fucking terrible.”

“Is that supposed to mean something to the rest of us?” Eliot prodded.

She glared at him deadpan as she asked, “What’s the fifth key from A on a piano?”

Seemingly catching up to her realizations, he said, “E.” 

“And which key is it that we’re looking for?” she challenged.

“But,” Quentin argued, “the piano…”

“Is right there,” Alice interrupted.

She pointed to the corner of the room, and inexplicably, she was right. The piano from earlier was sitting right there. 

The four of them practically scrambled over each other to reach it, pausing to listen as Kady pressed the E key. It clanged horribly, and Alice pushed through the others to lift the top of the piano and reveal just what they’d suspected. Nestled right there in the strings was a golden key.

Eliot reached for it, but Quentin grabbed his arm.

“Wait,” he warned, “no hands. We don’t know what it will do.”

Quentin pulled the sleeve of his sweater down over his hand and carefully plucked the key out of the piano. They all watched, somewhat awed, as he held it up in front of them. He turned around to set it down on top of the bookshelf, and they settled in to wait.

They watched the little key in silent anticipation for what must have been at least fifteen seconds with absolutely no change.

“Fuck this,” Kady said. 

She grabbed the key with her bare hand before any of them could stop her, and at first nothing seemed to happen.

Then.

“I don’t _care_ what Tick said! We are not turning this motherfucking boat around.”

They all exchanged a very confused look.

Eliot asked, “Margo?”

“Eliot?” she echoed.

Quentin looked up at Eliot.

He asked, “Wait, can you guys hear her too?”

“Quentin?” Margo answered. “Is that you?”

“Okay, this is weird,” Alice said.

“Dude, no, I told you I don’t want to go to your fucking book club.”

All of their heads snapped up, and Kady took half a step forward before stopping herself.

She shouted, “Penny!”

There was a pause, then Penny tentatively replied, “Hello?”

“Oh my God,” Kady breathed.

“Hang on,” Quentin said, “how can we all hear each other in our heads right now?”

“Uh guys,” another voice echoed. Julia. “I’m sure whatever this is, it’s important, but I just almost killed someone and then accidentally froze them in time, so I’m a little busy right now.”

A wave of voices shouting over each other followed that, every member of the group trying to simultaneously figure out what the fuck was happening as well as have seven different conversations at once. It didn’t take long for Quentin to decide it wasn’t going to be very productive.

“Everyone shut up for a minute!” he shouted. The voices fell silent. He continued, “Somehow we’re all connected because of the fifth key, and I think that’s what we need to focus on right now.”

Penny was the first to chime in again, “Uh, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m dead.”

That set everyone off again, and Quentin pinched the bridge of his nose as he sighed.

In a more commanding voice, he yelled over the fray, “Yes, we’re all fucked in our own ways, as usual, but… wait, that’s it.” He turned to look at the others. “It’s unity. We’re listening and speaking to each other right now, all seven of us, because that’s the test.”

“Hard pass,” Penny grumbled. “I don’t have time for a group therapy session.”

From behind them, Josh piped up, “Uh guys, I’m still here, in case you forgot.”

“Shut up, Josh,” Alice bit back.

He raised his eyebrows as he mouthed, “Okay!”

Inside their minds, Margo said, “What are you suggesting, that this is like the trials or something where we had to share our deepest darkest secrets?”

“Maybe,” Quentin said, “I don’t know, but it’s worth a try. The quest requires seven questers to complete it, so maybe that’s the point. We can’t work together if we’re all working against each other on our own shit.”

“Some of us seem to be working against the rest of us more than others,” Eliot said, a little sardonically.

Quentin cut a look at Alice, who folded her arms over her chest and frowned.

“I’m sorry, but where have you been during all of this?” she accused. “Last I checked, you haven’t exactly been around. All you care about is Fillory.”

Margo started, “Excuse you, we’ve been a little busy--”

“Guys,” Quentin cut in, holding his hands out to either side of him between Eliot and Alice, “this is exactly what I’m talking about.”

Eliot backed down a bit as he said, “Point taken.”

Alice huffed but stopped talking too. Quentin looked around at the four of them just in that room and realized what a monumental task this key was going to be. He’d lived out an entire lifetime to solve the mosaic, and he thought it might pale in comparison to getting all seven of them to be on the same page about anything.

“Okay,” he said, because everyone seemed to be waiting for his direction, “I guess, let’s just take turns saying what we’re dealing with right now?”

“Oh my God,” Penny groaned. “I hate you so much.”

Julia started, “Well, like I said, I’m trying to figure out how to not kill this fairy.”

Margo asked, “Wait, you’re with the _fairies_?”

“Not those fairies,” Julia amended. “These fairies are here on Earth, being kept as slaves and used for their magic. Fen’s here too by the way. She says hi.”

“Okay, uh, that’s good,” Quentin said. He was suddenly taking pity on every therapist he’d ever had. He said, “Anyone else?”

“I’m trying to outrun Tick and his army of morons and not starve to death,” Margo said, “which would be going a lot better if Eliot would get his immaculate ass back to Fillory with the supplies he went to Earth to get two days ago.”

Quentin laughed a little as he looked over his shoulder at Eliot, who sheepishly said, “Uh, sorry Bambi, I got a little sidetracked.”

“You don’t say,” she shot back in an unimpressed tone. “I hope whatever you’re doing is more important than getting our kingdom back.”

Eliot said, “At the risk of making this little group chat significantly more uncomfortable for everyone, I can assure you it is.”

“Isn’t making everyone uncomfortable kind of what we’re doing here?” Margo replied, her impatience practically palpable through her voice.

He shot a look at Quentin, and Quentin realized then what he was asking. He figured it was going to happen sooner or later, and now seemed like as good a time as any to rip off the bandaid. So, he nodded and reached back to squeeze Eliot’s hand.

Eliot cleared his throat and said, “Q and I are back together. Officially.”

There was about three seconds of silence in which Quentin would meet no one’s eyes before Penny laughed and said, “Oh, now this is getting interesting.”

Kady folded her arms over her chest and said, “Damn, Coldwater. I didn’t see that one coming.”

Quentin glared at her and said, “Way to be heteronormative, Kady.”

She raised her hands in the air with a small laugh and said, “Okay, sorry.”

Alice wasn’t looking at him or Eliot, and he thought that was probably for the best. He didn’t exactly want to know what her face was doing at that moment.

“I’m, uh, happy for you, Q,” Julia said, clearly trying to add a sense of tact to the conversation.

As her exact narrative foil, Margo jumped in with a, “Hang on, _back_ together? I think the rest of us are missing a few key plot points here, El.”

“We’ll talk later?” Eliot tried.

“Oh no,” Penny said, “we’re talking now, remember?”

Quentin groaned and said, “Okay, moving on. Does literally anyone else have something to say?”

“Yeah, actually,” Kady said, “I’d like to know what we’re doing about Penny being trapped in the Library.”

“Kady,” Penny tried.

“No,” she said, “don’t play the fucking martyr here. If these idiots have time for their little love triangle, then they have time to save your life.”

“I was trying to build a new body for him,” Alice finally spoke up, “but that was before I had to give Julia’s magic back.”

Julia said, “You didn’t tell me that.”

“Because none of us fucking talk to each other, probably,” Quentin muttered under his breath.

“Wait,” Kady said, “Julia, can you do it? Finish Penny’s new body?”

“I think so,” she said. “I’m not exactly sure what my magic can do or how it’s working, but I’m pretty sure I just leveled up.”

“Oh my God,” Kady exhaled on a relieved laugh. “Now we just have to figure out how to get Penny out of the Library.”

“I might be able to help with that,” Alice said tentatively.

Quentin turned to her then, and he couldn’t stop the bitter tone from creeping into his voice when he said, “I guess you do have connections.”

“Oh, fuck off, Quentin,” she shot back. “If it can help us save Penny, then why are you so upset?”

“I’m not upset about saving Penny!” he said, throwing his hands up at his sides. “I’m upset that you’re lying to us, and you won’t tell us what you’re doing with them.”

“He has a point,” Julia said, sounding a little like she would prefer not to be saying it. “If we’re all supposed to be working together on this, it’s a little counterproductive if we don’t know what you’re up to.”

“I’m not _up to_ anything,” Alice argued. “The Library is trying to get magic back too. They just want to make sure it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.”

Kady said, “You mean they want to control who has it and who doesn’t.”

“Well, we all had to take a test to get into Brakebills, didn’t we?” she asked. 

“Yeah, and I failed,” Julia retorted.

Kady shot Alice a pointed look, and she huffed and shifted from her left foot to her right.

“I’m not asking you all to understand,” she said. 

“No,” Quentin argued, “you’re just asking us all to trust you because you’re scared of what you’re capable of with magic, and you think that means you know what’s best for everyone else too.”

“Well, look what happened when magic was a free-for-all!” she said. “You killed a god without considering the consequences, and it got shut off for everyone. The Library is just a safeguard, so that things like that don’t happen again.”

“That’s not really fair,” Eliot started to argue, and Alice turned her icy glare onto him. 

She said, “Yeah, you would take his side.”

Before the argument could go in circles any further, Quentin said, “Fine, if working with the Library can help you save Penny, then it’d be nice if they were helpful for once.”

Alice nodded at him, a tentative white flag, and said, “Thank you.”

“Alright, so we have a game plan then,” Margo said. “Julia, Kady, and Alice are gonna get Penny into his new body, Eliot and Q are gonna get their asses to Fillory, and we’re going to take back our kingdom from Dick Pickwick. Anything else we need to cover?”

Before any of them could speak, there was a shuffling sound from behind them. Quentin turned around to see Josh rising from his chair, his restraints dropping at his sides, and clapping his hands.

“Bravo,” he drawled. “He said you’d ace it.”

Kady asked, “I’m sorry, who said what?”

Then right in front of them, Josh slipped away and was replaced by a middle-aged man in a white suit. Quentin took a step back and bumped into Eliot, who caught him with a hand on his arm.

The man said, “The only one I’d do this for. To be honest, it was kind of a pain, dealing with all your tedious human emotions.”

Alice asked, “So that’s it? Talking to each other was the test?”

“It was, and you passed,” he said. 

He raised a hand, and the room turned neon pink as a giant sign appeared above the door. It read _Questers Exit Here_.

“Um,” Quentin started, but the man interrupted him by practically shoving them through the door.

“I’ve got places to be and much more important people to see,” he told them.

Before they could even figure out what was happening, the four of them stumbled through the door and right back into the Physical Kids Cottage, just as they’d left it. The key clanged to the floor, and the connection to the others was broken.

Kady grabbed it again, shouting Penny’s name, but the inside of their heads remained silent.

“I guess it was a one time deal,” Quentin said.

Kady dropped the key on the table and stalked off, muttering about finding Julia, which left him, Alice, and Eliot alone in the room together. There was an awkward silence for an almost unbearable several seconds before Quentin cleared his throat.

“Uh, Alice, maybe we should talk,” he said.

Alice placed her hands on her hips as if to steel herself before replying, “I really don’t care where you’re putting your dick, Q. I have to go figure out how to break Penny out of the Library.”

With that, she stormed out of the room, and Quentin exhaled heavily. Eliot placed a hand on his shoulder, and Quentin reflexively relaxed into his touch.

“That could have gone worse,” he mused.

Quentin laughed as he looked up at him. It really could have, he supposed.


	3. if one thing had been different

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter contains canon-typical levels of major character violence/death in timeline 23 but it's not quite the same timeline 23 as you're probably expecting. i'll put some vague yet more specific spoilers in the notes at the end of the chapter if anyone wants the content warnings!

Team Save Penny had set up shop in the back of the Cottage, and it was going about as well as could be expected. Alice was dictating spellwork to Julia, Kady was supervising like a hawk, and all of them seemed to be arguing with Fen about what to do with the fairies Julia had discovered. They decidedly did not need any help, and that left only Eliot and Quentin to get back to Margo in Fillory and figure out the sixth key. Quentin had started to go and tell the others goodbye first but thought better of it. To say that Alice was avoiding him was an understatement, and he wasn’t exactly enjoying the tension between the rest of them either. So, he and Eliot didn’t waste any time stepping back through the portal and into Fillory.

Literally as soon as they made it onto the Muntjac, Margo descended on them.

“You’d better not take one more step unless you brought groceries, because if I have to pluck and eat another pigeon, I’m going to kill someone.”

Eliot walked up to her and dropped a kiss onto her forehead, reassuring her, “Yes, dear. I got everything you requested.”

“Good,” she pouted up at him. “It took you long enough.”

She peeked around Eliot’s shoulder at Quentin at that, and her expression turned nothing short of predatory as a slow smile spread across her face.

“Speaking of which,” she said, “El, why don’t you go make dinner while Q and I talk?”

“Bambi,” Eliot warned, “be nice.”

Margo looked up at him and batted her eyelashes as she said, “I’m always nice.”

“Yeah, that’s how I’d describe you,” Eliot snarked. Then he turned to Quentin and said, “Good luck.”

He left them alone then, though not before kissing Quentin on the cheek on his way out. When Quentin turned back to face Margo, she had made her way to an ornate looking chaise lounge and was waiting for him. She patted the spot next to her, and he rolled his eyes fondly as he made his way over and sat down.

“If this is a shovel talk, you don’t need to worry about that,” he told her.

She raised an eyebrow at him and reached out to brush back his hair. She said, “That’s good to hear, because if I find out you’re just using Eliot as a stand in for Alice…”

“God, no, of course I’m not,” he said, feeling a little offended that she’d even think that. To be fair to her though, it wasn’t really a stretch considering that the last she knew, he’d been head over heels for her. She’d missed a significant part of the story, after all. He turned to face her more fully and said, “Look, Margo, I’m sure Eliot is going to want to be the one to tell you the whole story, but this thing between me and him, it’s not happening on a whim.”

“Okay,” she said, with a calculating look in her eye, “I’ll believe you, for now.”

He sighed at her, and she grinned back at him, the mischievous glint in her eye as strong as ever. He said, “I’m in love with him, okay. Is that what you need to hear?”

Her eye widened a little, and she said, “Shit, I guess me and El really do have a lot to talk about.”

Quentin nodded his head, and her smile got a little softer. She said, “Alright, you pass the test. Now I’m gonna have to give Eliot the same talk.”

Quentin laughed and rolled his eyes as she reached out to wrap him in a hug. It wasn’t like he’d been worried about Margo’s approval, but having it was nice all the same.

Later that evening, the three of them were scattered across the cabin in relative silence as Quentin pored over the quest book and Eliot poured them all drinks. They’d been talking logistics for hours and had yet to make much headway. The general consensus was obviously that they needed to find a way to take Fillory back from Tick, but the question of how was yet to be determined. 

That’s when Quentin finally figured it out.

“Holy shit, I know where the next key is.”

Eliot carefully sat their drinks down on the coffee table in the middle of Quentin and Margo and moved to look over his shoulder. 

Quentin turned around to look at Eliot and said, “It’s in the throne room at Whitespire.”

“Great,” Margo said, “the place where Tick is waiting with a serrated spoon to just saw off our heads.”

“We have to get our thrones back,” Eliot concluded. 

Quentin asked, “Yeah, but how?”

They were silent for a moment until Margo said, “I think I have an idea.”

Eliot leaned over the back of the sofa and said, “I’m listening.”

Margo took a sip of her drink and sat it down. She said, “How would you feel about bringing democracy to Fillory?”

Quentin frowned and said, “There’s no precedent for elections here, and besides, we don’t have the power to call for one. Tick would have to do it.”

“And he’s got nothing to gain,” Eliot agreed.

Margo smugly shook her head and said, “Oh, he’ll call for one alright. Give me that key, Q. I’m making a run to Kinko’s.”

Quentin exchanged a look with Eliot but reached for the key nonetheless. Eliot turned to look at her and asked, “What are you planning, Bambi?”

“Giving people shit is easy,” she shrugged, “taking it away is the hard part. We drop a few thousand campaign flyers and the people will be rioting in the streets if he tells them they aren’t actually getting to vote.”

“That’s... actually really smart,” Quentin conceded as he passed the key to her.

“Thank you,” she said approvingly. 

He sat back in his seat to pick up the quest book again, and then he was standing inside a tesla flexion. With Julia.

“What the hell just happened?” he asked, looking around him.

Julia said, “Someone summoned us. I was just talking to Dean Fogg and then I was… here.”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, “I was on the Muntjac in Fillory talking to Eliot and Margo about the election.”

“The what?” Julia asked.

“I’ll explain later,” Quentin told her. “Just, don’t touch anything in here until we find out what’s going on.”

The two of them pressed closer together in the center of the glowing thing. They only had to wait a few more seconds to find out just who had brought them there. Out of literally thin air, Alice, from presumably another timeline, appeared in front of them. 

“It worked!” she exclaimed.

She had kind of a manic look in her eye like maybe she hadn’t slept in several days, and Quentin was immediately taken aback. He felt Julia grip his shirtsleeve.

Hesitantly, he asked, “What worked?”

“We don’t have long,” she said quickly, “and there’s a lot that I need to tell you.”

“Yeah, two minutes, we got it,” Julia said.

Alice looked at her then back at Quentin, recognition flickering on her face. She said, “You’re the same Quentin who pulled me in here before.”

“Oh shit, you’re from timeline 23,” he realized.

Julia said, “Guys, two minutes.”

“Right,” Alice said. She pushed her hair back behind her ears and continued, “There’s this monster here killing magicians. We call him the Beast.”

Quentin asked, “Let me guess, face covered in moths?”

“Yes,” Alice said eagerly, “the problem is that magic is gone, which has left us practically defenseless.”

“It’s gone here too,” Julia said. “You don’t know why?”

“No,” Alice said, “one day these people just showed up and turned it off.”

“Yeah, here too,” Quentin said, “but if magic is gone, then why can’t you just kill the beast?”

“Because he still has magic,” Alice said.

“But that doesn’t make sense,” Quentin argued. “He’s not a god.”

Alice explained, “We think it might have something to do with this key he wears around his neck. There’s a rumor that it gives him visions of the future.”

Quentin turned to Julia quickly, and she met him with wide eyes.

“That’s not the sixth key,” Quentin said.

Julia finished his logical conclusion, “What if it’s the seventh?”

Alice started talking quickly again, “Julia, in our timeline, you were super close to finally figuring out how to defeat him.”

“And then what happened?” Julia asked.

Alice gave her an apologetic look as she said, “And then you died.”

Julia looked a little surprised as she said, “Oh.”

Then Alice turned to Quentin and said, “And Q, I think you might be our only chance left to stop him.”

“What?” Quentin asked, looking between her and Julia. “Why me?”

The lights of the tesla flexion started to flicker around them, and Alice looked quickly from side to side before hurrying to say, “Please, we need your help!”

And then the lights went out, and Quentin found himself stumbling backwards into the cabin of the Muntjac.

“Q, what the fuck?!”

Eliot rushed to his side, catching him just before he tripped over a chair, and Quentin turned to look at him.

“I have to go to timeline 23,” he said.

Once Quentin had sat down and explained the whole encounter to Eliot and Margo, they made their opinions on the idea very clear.

“Absolutely not,” Eliot said.

Quentin started to argue with him, but Margo chimed in, “I’m with Eliot. It’s too dangerous.”

“Listen, I know timeline 23 isn’t our problem to solve or whatever,” Quentin told them, “but the beast has the seventh key, and this may be our only chance to get it.”

Margo asked, “And how do we know we can trust Alice23 about all this? She doesn’t exactly have a track record of transparency.”

Eliot nodded and pointed over at Margo, and Quentin sighed at them both.

“I’ve talked to her before,” Quentin told them. “Julia and I asked her for help with bringing our Alice’s shade back from the Underworld. Trust me, she wasn’t lying.”

Margo stared at him for a few more seconds before sighing and saying, “Well, if you’re hellbent on running headfirst into whatever fuckery is waiting in timeline 23, then I guess I can’t stop you.”

Quentin nodded at her and turned to look at Eliot, who had been mostly quiet during this exchange. Eliot was staring at him with an intense, scrutinizing expression. Quentin reached over and took his hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing once. 

Finally, Eliot asked, “Are you sure it’s the only way to get the seventh key?”

Quentin nodded and said, “It seems like it.”

Eliot looked down at their joined hands and nodded once. He said, “Okay, but I’m coming with you.” 

Margo immediately protested, “Eliot, you can’t.”

Quentin said, “She’s right, El. What about the election?”

“Fuck the election,” Eliot said, looking up at him, “I’m not letting you do this alone.”

Quentin reached out with his free hand and brought it rest against the side of Eliot’s face, smiling when Eliot leaned into the touch.

“I’ll be fine,” Quentin promised him. “Julia will be there too, and she has her magic in case things go sideways.”

Eliot still didn’t look happy, but he closed his eyes and exhaled as Quentin dropped his hand. He said, “If you’re not back by tomorrow morning, I swear to God, I will find a way to timeline 23 and then they’ll think that the real beast was me all along.”

Quentin laughed at him and said, “That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“Darling, you knew what you signed up for,” Eliot replied.

He brought Quentin’s hand up to his lips and kissed the back of it, grinning up at him all the while, and Margo made an indelicate gagging sound from somewhere behind them. 

“God, just go already,” she said. “If I have to watch you two be gross for one more second, I’m throwing you both off of this boat.”

Quentin turned to glare at her, but it softened when he saw that she was definitely fighting back the tiniest of smiles. 

He could only assume that Julia was waiting for him, considering their interactions inside the tesla flexion, so he didn’t want to wait around much longer before opening a portal. Margo still needed a ride to Earth as well, so she was going to go through with him.

“Here’s hoping this takes us to Brakebills,” he said, as he was standing in front of the door that had manifested in the side of the boat.

Eliot stepped up with a small little grin and pulled him in for a hug. Quentin wrapped his arms around Eliot’s waist and closed his eyes as he buried his head against his chest.

“It’ll be fine,” he said, both to reassure Eliot and himself.

“I know,” Eliot said. He leaned down to kiss the top of Quentin’s head. “Just get the key and come home. I want you at my coronation ceremony when I become the first elected High King of Fillory.”

Quentin stepped back and looked up at him, tilting his head in the way that always got Eliot to respond by leaning in for a kiss. It worked that time, just like every other. Eliot brought his hand to rest on the side of his neck, and Quentin leaned up on tiptoes to kiss back.

When they separated, Quentin said, “I love you.”

“Love you too, Q,” Eliot said. 

Quentin nodded back and straightened his shoulders before he could do something stupid like tear up about it. Not that he thought Eliot would blame him if he did, considering Eliot looked a little teary himself. He gave both Eliot and Margo what he hoped to be a confident smile before turning and sticking the key in the door.

Luckily for him, the key worked the way it was supposed to for once, and he and Margo found themselves standing in an empty Brakebills classroom. It was dark aside from some light streaming in from a nearby window, and Julia was sitting on the edge of a table at the center of the room.

“So, I guess I didn’t imagine all of that then,” she said.

She was looking up at him with a dimpled grin, and he said, “Yeah, I was sort of hoping I might have too, but looks like it really happened.”

Margo walked around to stand between them, giving Julia a quick look before turning back to Quentin.

“Be careful,” she told him sternly. “Don’t make me come and get you, because I will.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, giving her a mock salute, which she nodded at approvingly.

She leaned in to kiss his cheek quickly before waving at Julia and turning to leave. Quentin turned back Julia and walked over to her, holding up the key.

“This should take us to timeline 23,” he said. 

Her eyes tracked the movement before she grimaced. She said, “Speaking of the key quest, I have an update for you about the sixth key.”

“I know, it’s in Whitespire,” he said.

“Not exactly,” she replied. “The Fairy Queen told me and Fen that they have it, in the fairy realm. Apparently without it, their whole realm would collapse, so they won’t give it to us.”

Quentin dragged his hands over his face. That was just about right, given their luck with every other key so far.

“Okay, we’ll figure that out after we get back, I guess,” he said.

Julia nodded at him and hopped down from the table. She said, “Let’s go, then.”

They stepped right into one portal and out into what looked like an absolute war torn version of the Physical Kids Cottage.

“What the hell happened here,” Quentin muttered, looking around at all of the overturned furniture and scattered debris.

“You made it!”

Both he and Julia spun around to see Alice standing in front of them, with Kady at her side. It made Quentin’s heart hurt a little, to see this version of Alice again. He’d forgotten what it was like to have her look at him and not feel the hatred behind her glare.

She rushed forward and crashed into him with a hug, and he brought his arms up to return her embrace. She stepped back a little awkwardly and waved hello to Julia as well, who was having a very weird and intense stare off with this version of Kady.

“We’re here to help,” Quentin said, “but we do have one condition.”

Regarding him with open skepticism, Kady asked, “What’s the condition?”

“We help you kill your beast, and we get the key he’s wearing around his neck,” Julia responded.

Kady replied, “You help us kill him, and you can take whatever the hell you want from this shithole.”

Quentin nodded, “Okay, then. Let’s get started.”

It turned out what Julia23 had been working on was the rhinemann ultra, but she died before she’d figured out how to get enough power to cast it. Then after magic went out, they’d given up hope on being able to use it at all. That was, at least, one area where they could offer some good news.

Julia held open her palm, and Alice and Kady watched with growing, visible awe as a daisy bloomed in the middle of it.

Alice said, “I thought you said you guys didn’t have magic.”

“We don’t,” Julia said, “but I’m sort of a special case.”

“That’s great,” Alice replied, brushing her hair back quickly and glancing at Kady, “you can power the spell then.”

Kady added, “Too bad we don’t know how to do the spell.”

Quentin asked, “Dean Fogg wouldn’t happen to still be around, would he? He helped us get it in our timeline.”

“I can take you to him,” Alice replied, “though I can’t promise he’ll be very helpful.”

Dean Fogg had never been particularly helpful, so frankly, that didn’t seem like a good enough reason not to try. Quentin nodded and turned back to Julia. He asked, “Are you okay here while we go and talk to Fogg?”

Julia glanced at Kady once before nodding. She said, “Yeah, we’re good.”

According to the girls, Fogg was apparently squirreled away in his office, which was no longer his office and more of a locked down bunker.

“We don’t see him much anymore,” Alice said. “After the Beast attacked Brakebills, he just kind of gave up.”

“Yeah, that sounds like Fogg,” Quentin mused.

They ambled along through the corridors of the administration building in silence, and Quentin couldn’t help but feel saddened by the absolutely trashed state of the place. Brakebills hadn’t turned out to be all he might have hoped it would, but it had been a home to him. A sign of belonging. He’d met his friends, his family here. Even though this wasn’t his timeline, seeing it utterly destroyed was a little bit painful.

“So, uh,” he turned to Alice, “what happened to your Quentin? Last time we spoke…”

“I was trying to find a way to bring him back,” Alice finished for him. She stared straight ahead as she said, “I never found it. The only way to bring him back was to do it without his shade, and that seemed…”

She trailed off, so Quentin finished for her, “Like a bad idea?”

She frowned for a minute before replying, “Yeah, something like that.”

He gave her a sidelong glance as they walked and finally allowed himself a moment to take in this Alice. She seemed different, from the last time they spoke. She was a little steadier and a little more determined but also wearier. She walked like she had the weight of the world on her shoulders.

“What happened to us?” he asked. “Here, I mean.”

She looked over at him and gave him a sad smile.

“We broke up before you died, if that’s what you mean,” she said. “We were never meant to be, Q, and I’m guessing you and your Alice have probably figured that out too.”

“Yeah, uh, we did,” he told her.

She nodded, like she simply understood. She said, “We were really good friends though, at the end. I was really happy for you and Eliot, believe it or not.”

Quentin’s head shot up. 

He asked, “Your Quentin was dating Eliot?”

She asked, “Is that surprising to you?”

He laughed a little and shook his head. He said, “I’m actually dating Eliot too.”

Alice gave him a sideways glance and smiled too. She said, “Yeah, that figures.”

He almost couldn’t believe the ease with which she was talking to him about it all. His Alice couldn’t even look him in the eye, but if this version of her had found a way to stay in his life after everything, then that was something at least.

“I’m really glad your Quentin got to have you as a friend,” he told her, as sincerely as he could.

She raised an eyebrow at him and asked, “Is that not the case with your Alice?”

Quentin huffed, “Things are weird with her right now.”

“Yeah, I can be a real bitch sometimes,” she mused. Quentin smiled at her and she grinned back. She said, “Give her time. She’ll come around.”

“I hope so,” he said.

When they reached Fogg’s office, the door had been replaced with what looked more like a steel vault. Alice knocked, and then a few seconds later, a narrow window slid open at the top. 

In a tired sounding voice, Dean Fogg asked, “What do you want, Alice?” 

“I brought someone to speak to you,” she said.

He sighed, “If Marina is back again, you can tell her that I have nothing to say to her.”

Alice stepped to the side, and his eyes narrowed in on Quentin before widening. 

“Oh,” he said.

The window slid shut, and they waited as the sound of several deadbolts opening filtered out into the hall. Then, the door cracked open, and Fogg waved them inside. As soon as they’d entered the room, the door was slammed shut behind them again.

“You’ll have to excuse my security system,” Fogg told them. “I know it won’t stop the beast if he comes for me, but without magic, the best I can hope to do is slow him down.”

Quentin supposed that made sense. He wasn’t sure what kind of magic the beast had gotten from the key, but he knew that he was powerful and smart. With even the slightest advantage, he would still be a significant threat.

“I’m guessing you are not from this timeline,” Dean Fogg surmised.

“Uh, no,” Quentin replied. “I’m from timeline 40.”

Fogg stared at him with no expression for a few uncomfortable seconds before sighing heavily. He reached under his desk and pulled out a liquor bottle. Without even hesitating, he removed the cap and took a swig.

Quentin exchanged a look with Alice, and they both jumped when the dean slammed the bottle back down.

He said, “If I have to live through seventeen goddamn more of these timelines, I might as well start drinking now.”

And well, that was kind of understandable.

“Listen,” Quentin said, figuring they didn’t have much time to beat around the bush, “in our timeline, we used the rhinemann ultra on the beast. You were able to help us get it from Bigsby.”

“Bigsby is dead,” Fogg said in a matter of fact voice, “but the good news is, I sent two students to her to get the spell before she was murdered.”

“Okay, great,” Quentin said, glancing between him and Alice, “where are they?”

“They’re also dead,” Fogg said. “They died horribly while attempting to boost their power enough to cast it.”

“That sucks,” Quentin said.

That was putting it mildly, but he wasn’t actually sure how he was supposed to respond to any of this.

“Yes, it does,” Dean Fogg agreed. “Julia was already long dead, and magic was lost shortly after, so all of our efforts turned out to be in vain in the end. I was able to salvage their copy of it, though, from their corpses, if you wish to see it.”

They nodded, and Fogg turned around to dig through his file cabinet, presumably for the spell, which gave Quentin a few seconds to process all of _that_. He was having a lot of trouble coping with the reminders that this Julia had died, if he was honest. Of all the people he loved, she was a constant in his life and always had been. His guardian angel, she’d once said. He sort of selfishly hoped for the sake of his alternate self that he’d died first because he couldn’t imagine a world without her in it.

His Julia was alive and well and just across campus waiting for him though, and he just had to remember that to get through this conversation.

Dean Fogg turned back around with a weathered looking piece of notebook paper in his hands. The spell was scrawled down on it in quick handwriting, and there were a few drops of blood along the edges of the page, like whoever had been holding it had probably met their fate with the spell in their hands.

“Just out of curiosity,” Quentin asked, “who were the two students you sent to get the spell?”

Fogg answered, “Penny Adiyodi and Margo Hanson.”

Quentin felt his stomach turn, and he had to clench his fists tightly in order to ground himself. He’d noticed a distinct gap in their surviving friend group of this timeline, but he’d been too afraid to ask about any of the others until now. It hurt too much to hear. The only part of him still holding onto his sense of self-preservation couldn’t bear to ask what had happened to the only one still unaccounted for. It was maybe more than he could take if he found out that Eliot had died, even though the odds weren’t exactly good that he’d somehow survived. Quentin just had to do what he’d come here to do and get home, where his people were waiting for him.

Fogg handed the spell over to him. 

“Thank you,” he said.

Dean Fogg considered him for a moment before sighing heavily, but it sounded a little less detached and maybe the slightest bit wistful.

He finally said, “I have no idea what you plan to do with it without magic, but I hope that whatever it is, it works.”

“Yeah, me too,” Quentin told him.

And so they left the dean like that, with a whiskey bottle in hand, as they made the trek back across campus to get started. Julia’s magic was strong, but even she was going to need a minute or two to power up the spell. When they arrived back at the Cottage, she and Kady were sitting on top of a table in the kitchen, inexplicably laughing about something.

Julia turned around when she heard them approaching.

She asked, “Did you get it?”

He nodded and handed over the piece of notebook paper, and Julia studied it for only a moment before quickly getting to work. Within minutes, complicated golden symbols were spilling out of her hands and into the air in front of her, and Quentin felt mesmerized as he watched.

“That spell takes so much power,” Alice said quietly, “how is she doing it alone?”

She sounded somewhere between impressed and jealous, and Quentin couldn’t help but smile. He said, “Don’t take it personally, she’s somewhat of a demigoddess or... something. We’re sort of still figuring that out.”

“What the fuck happened in your timeline?” Alice asked.

He sighed, “Way more than we have time to get into.”

Julia had only been at work for a couple of minutes when the Cottage began to shake. They all had to brace themselves as they looked around for the source of it.

“Shit, it’s the beast,” Kady said. “He must have sensed the magic.”

“I’m not ready!” Julia called out, her face scrunched up in concentration on the spell in her hands.

Alice replied, “That doesn’t matter. We have to hide.”

They all reluctantly hurried out of the kitchen and into the common room, in search of any sort of hiding place, and the four of them just managed to crouch down behind the flipped over coffee table when they heard the front door swing open. Quentin was holding his breath, afraid that even the slightest movement might be the cause of all of their undoing. After a moment, he could hear footsteps approaching then stopping, followed by a heavy sigh. 

Julia jumped up then before any of them even had time to realize that she’d been powering up the spell again.

“Stay down!” she told them.

Quentin could hear the _whoosh_ of magic that was her firing off the spell, and a loud crash followed in its wake. Julia stumbled back a bit, and Quentin waited with baited breath to see the results of her strike.

When he risked a peek up at her face though, she looked horrified. She stared straight ahead for a few silent seconds before she finally said the very last word Quentin could have ever hoped to hear.

“Eliot?”

Quentin didn’t really make any conscious decisions about how to react in that moment, but he still found himself scrambling to his feet, despite Alice trying to pull him back down. Sure enough, standing barely six feet in front of them, was Eliot. Or a version of Eliot anyways. His mouth was twisted up into a cruel looking smile, and his eyes shot over to Quentin the second he stood up.

“Q,” he said, and the detached look slipped just a little as his eyes raked over Quentin from head to toe. Then the cool expression took over again, and he said, “The key didn’t lie after all.”

Quentin opened his mouth to say something, though he wasn’t sure what. Before he could get out a single syllable though, Julia grabbed his hand tightly, and they were gone.

He looked around frantically, noting that they were now in what appeared to be the clean room Dean Fogg had set up deep within the administration building. Alice and Kady had apparently been transported too, and he would have wondered how Julia managed that if he had any space left in his brain that wasn’t fully freaking out.

“Q,” Alice started.

Her voice cut through his panic, and he jerked his head around to look at her.

He asked, “What the fuck, Alice? Did you know?”

Alice turned to look at Kady, and the two of them shared a significant look. Then Alice turned back to him, gently, and said, “Yeah, Q, we knew. We didn’t tell you because we knew there was no way you’d help us kill him if you knew it was Eliot.”

Quentin ran his hand through his hair and paced from one side of the room to another. He felt sick and definitely on the wrong side of the panic attack that was building within his chest. He turned back to the three women watching him and asked, “I mean, how did this even happen?”

“The beast killed you when he killed Julia,” Kady said, “so Eliot went after him on his own before any of us could stop him.”

Julia stepped up to his side and took his hand, and he squeezed back tightly, needing her to hold on to.

Alice explained, “Eliot was successful at defeating the beast, but it took a lot more power than he had to do it.”

“He became a niffin,” Julia said, sounding horrified at her realization as she said it.

Alice nodded.

“It’s not Eliot anymore,” Kady told them. “He’s killed hundreds of magicians, and he has to be stopped, whatever it takes. Hell, Penny and Margo died trying to stop him.”

Quentin felt a sharp pang shoot through his chest. He felt a little like his heart was actually breaking as he replied, “Of course it’s still Eliot.”

“Q,” Alice started, her voice sympathetic, “I know that you love him, but we can’t spare him.”

Quentin shook his head. He said, “I’m not suggesting that. I’m saying we use it against him. Let me distract him and get the key, and then you guys box him. It’ll work without whatever power the key is giving him.”

“No!” Julia said. He turned to look at her, and she continued, “Q, we’re not using you as bait. He’ll kill you.”

“Maybe,” Quentin admitted, “but even if he’s lost his shade, he’s still Eliot, deep down. I know I can get through to him long enough for you guys to do what needs to be done.”

“That is a terrible idea,” Kady said.

Quentin sighed and dropped both of his hands at his sides. He said, “Well, we don’t have a better one!”

Unfortunately, he was right. They really didn’t.

He turned to Alice.

“That’s what you meant when you said I was your only chance at beating him now, right?” he asked her.

She looked a little guilty as she nodded and answered, “I was hoping he would sense you were here and come looking.”

“What the fuck?” Julia asked her.

“I didn’t actually want Q to be in danger!” Alice defended herself. “I knew Eliot would come, but you were supposed to be able to stop him before he had the chance to do anything.”

“A little heads up would have been nice!” Julia shot back.

“Guys,” Kady interrupted, “arguing about this isn’t going to stop the beast from finding us here eventually.”

Something about the simple way she said ‘the beast’ when she meant the love of Quentin’s life made his heart ache deep within his chest. It wasn’t like Eliot had wanted this. Quentin knew him better than that. If he’d become the beast after losing his shade, it was probably from the part of him that was left to grieve alone. He’d lost both Quentin and Margo. If there was even a tiny shred of Eliot still in there, of course he’d lost his mind. If it had been Eliot and Julia, Quentin would have too.

“She’s right,” Quentin said. “We have to go back to the Cottage, and I have to get the key while Julia casts the spell.”

Though the others weren’t exactly thrilled by the idea, none of them had any reasonable arguments left against it. They were here, and this was their last viable option. Eliot would find them eventually, and they’d die if they weren’t prepared. They had to take the fight to him.

When they got back to the Cottage, Eliot was standing behind the bar, or what was left of it anyways. He was twirling a wine glass in his hand, swishing around the red liquid and watching as it gathered at the bottom again. It was such an Eliot thing to do that Quentin could have almost pretended it was any other day at any normal Cottage party. 

“I know you’re here, Quentin,” he called, sounding a little deceptively bored.

Quentin took a step forward, but Julia grabbed his hand. He turned to look at her and whispered, “Just be ready.”

She reluctantly let go of him, and he turned the corner into Eliot’s line of sight. Eliot looked up and met his gaze with a predatory smile. Then his eyes flashed blue, and Quentin gulped.

“Hey, Eliot,” he said.

Eliot drawled, “Hello, Q. I’m surprised Julia and Alice let you come back.”

“I wanted to see you,” Quentin said.

It wasn’t even a lie, and that was the most difficult part.

Eliot sat his wine glass down and circled around the bar to come closer. Quentin forced himself to stay rooted to the spot as Eliot approached. He stopped when he was barely a foot away and simply stared at him.

“You’re not my Quentin,” he said.

“No, I’m not,” Quentin said, holding out his hand in front of him, “but I know you.”

“You knew me,” Eliot corrected.

Quentin said, “Eliot, you’re not evil.”

“Maybe your Eliot isn’t,” he replied. “Your Eliot is probably still running around with his tender little heart, terrified of himself and what everyone thinks of him. He’ll learn one day, just like I did, that there’s no point to all of that….restraint.”

He flicked his fingers in the air, a burst of white blue magic gathering at the ends of them. 

“Doing the right thing doesn’t get you _shit_ ,” he continued. “You’ll still lose everything in the end.”

Quentin took a step towards him, drawn in like a moth to the flame, and said, “I’m so sorry about everything that’s happened to you, El.”

Eliot took a step back and yelled in sharp voice, “ _Don’t_ call me that!”

Quentin tried to follow him and said, “Eliot, I--”

Before he could reach the end of that sentence though, Julia appeared out of nowhere and held her hands out in front of her, shoving them towards Eliot with a bright red glowing… something held between them.

Eliot fell back into the bar, knocking over a chair and a few bottles in the process, and he was looking around frantically as he scrambled for purchase.

“What’s happening?” he asked.

And Quentin’s heart dropped straight into his stomach, because that wasn’t niffin Eliot talking. That was _Eliot_.

Without taking his eyes off of Eliot, he asked, “Julia, what did you do?”

“It’s my shade,” she said. “I can live without it if I have to, but I can’t make the spell strong enough to box him as long as he’s got the key, and there’s no way he was going to give it to you.”

Eliot was staring at her with wide eyes, but then he turned his head to focus on Quentin, and his whole face fell.

“Oh my God, Q,” he sobbed.

He stood up and practically ran across the distance between them, crashing into Quentin’s arms and pulling him close against him.

“Q, baby, I’ve missed you so much,” he said into Quentin’s hair. Then, before Quentin could even respond, Eliot placed his hands on his shoulders and pulled back. In a horrified voice, he said, “You died. I lost you.”

Quentin reached up and placed his hand on Eliot’s chest, right over his heart, as he said, “El, I’m so sorry. You didn’t deserve any of this.”

Eliot closed his eyes, and a single tear rolled down his cheek. His lips trembled as Quentin reached up to wipe it away.

Then he opened his eyes and said, “You have to stop me, Q. Now, while I’m like this.”

Quentin watched as he reached inside the collar of his shirt and pulled out the golden key. He lifted over his head and held it out to Quentin.

“I won’t have as much power without it,” he said, “but I’ll never stop. Not if you don’t box me.”

Quentin felt like his heart was being torn in two as he watched the emotion play out on Eliot’s face. It may not have been his Eliot, but it was still Eliot, and there was no part of Quentin that wanted to hurt him in any way. He reached out and took the key though, tucking it under his shirt carefully. Eliot watched him with a shuddering exhale, like he was still fighting back tears.

“I really wish there was another way,” Quentin told him quietly.

Eliot gave him a sad smile and reached out to brush his hair back behind his ear.

He said, “I do too, sweetheart.”

Quentin stared at him for a moment, waging with the war inside him that was fighting against every single part of this. Then he allowed himself one little capitulation and leaned up on tiptoes to kiss Eliot once, gently, on the lips.

Eliot sighed against him and brought his hand up to rest on the back of Quentin’s neck, just like he always does every time. They separated after a few seconds, and Eliot nodded as he took a step back.

“Okay, I’m ready,” he said, kind of like he was trying to convince himself, “but I do have to tell you and Julia one thing first. That quest you’re on, to bring back magic? The key showed me how it ends. There’s something horrible waiting for you behind the locked door. It’s a monster, worse than even me. You have to find another way.”

Quentin exchanged a worried look with Julia.

Eliot said, “Please. If there’s a version of me in your timeline, you don’t want to know what he’d do if he lost you.”

Quentin nodded with a careful smile and said, “I think I can imagine.”

He reached out to squeeze Eliot’s hand one last time before stepping back, allowing Julia space to get to work. Eliot’s eyes remained on him though, and Quentin couldn’t make himself look away. 

“Goodbye, Q,” he said.

Quentin felt hot tears stinging his eyes, and he bit back a sob as he said, “Goodbye, El.”

Eliot gave him one last sad smile, and then just like that, he was gone. Only the tiny wooden box on the floor remained in his place.

Alice ran forward to pick it up, and Quentin stumbled back a step, feeling suddenly very lightheaded on his feet. He felt like his heart had just been scooped out of his chest, his whole body thrown off balance in the process. Julia was in a similar state next to him as her shade returned to her.

She asked, “Q, are you okay?” 

He nodded and closed his eyes as he steadied himself. He said, “Yeah. Let’s just go back home. Now.”

They said quick goodbyes to Alice and Kady and then did exactly that. When they got back to Brakebills of timeline 40, which was refreshingly intact, Quentin only had one single thing on his mind. He knew there was a lot to discuss. Julia was probably going to have to help them with the fairies and the sixth key, and they had to figure out what it meant that they now had the seventh. And he should probably be a good friend as well and find out how Julia was doing, after everything. At that moment though, he just needed Eliot.

He stopped in the middle of the empty classroom and turned back to Julia.

“Jules,” he said, “I…”

She gave him that dimpled smile and a look full of understanding as she nodded and said, “I know, Q. Go.”

He stepped forward to pull her into a tight hug before smiling back at her and pulling out the key. The second he stepped through the portal, it was to a dark cabin in the Muntjac. 

He looked around, noting that it was night time outside the windows, and he really hoped he’d only been gone for a few hours instead of a few days. Then his eyes caught on a movement over by the chairs. He took a step closer and saw none other than Eliot lounging against the sofa with his legs stretched out in front of him and a piece of parchment in his hands. Eliot, alive and well and waiting for him.

“El,” he breathed.

Eliot jumped up immediately at the sound of his voice, and Quentin couldn’t stop himself from _running_ to him. He crashed into Eliot’s open arms so hard that it nearly knocked them both over. Eliot caught him though, and Quentin felt himself finally start to cry as he locked his arms tight around his waist.

It was like all of the stress he’d been holding onto from everything he’d seen had finally come uncoiled, and it was pouring out as he sobbed into Eliot’s chest.

Eliot brought one hand up to cup the back of his head, holding him in place right underneath his chin, and Quentin only held on tighter.

“Shh,” Eliot whispered, “it’s okay, baby. I’m here, it’s okay.”

For the moment at least, Quentin allowed himself to believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there's an "onscreen" MAJOR character death of one of the questers in timeline 23 and referenced deaths of almost everyone else in that timeline, but none of our timeline 40 characters are harmed while there! i didn't label this fic major character death because it's not really, in my opinion, but the warning is here for this chapter anyways because it is pretty sad. also it's not suicide like in the show because, much like everything else sjh has written, i did not appreciate that choice nor do i respect it.


	4. we might just get away with it

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen idk what's going on in this chapter but i sure wrote it

Quentin woke up to afternoon sunlight streaming in through the window of his and Eliot’s bedroom on the Muntjac. He could tell it was afternoon because he felt suspiciously well rested.

He and Eliot had pretty much immediately fallen into bed after Quentin stumbled back into the right timeline at around 2am, but sleep hadn’t come quickly for him after all that he had seen. He’d wanted to tell Eliot everything right away, but it was still too fresh, too painful. 

The next day though, he felt a little more stable about all of it. 

He expected that everyone else was probably off doing something important while he wasted away the day asleep, but when he rolled over to get away from the offending light, Eliot was propped up in bed next to him with a laptop cradled against his knees and Photoshop open on the screen. He peeked at the open file to see a picture of Eliot gleefully throwing handfuls of Fillorian money into the air.

He mumbled, half into his pillow, “What are you doing?”

“I’m making this campaign poster more exciting,” Eliot told him, and then he hit save and set the laptop aside in favor of scooting back down into the bed until he and Quentin were lying face to face. He grinned and said, “It’s nice of you to finally join me, sleeping beauty.”

“You were up just as late as I was,” Quentin accused. “Why aren’t you still sleeping?”

“Because Margo dragged me out of bed four fucking hours ago,” he groaned. “It turns out running for High King requires you to actually do things.”

“Well, that’s not fair,” Quentin replied.

Eliot agreed, “It truly isn’t.”

He scooted closer, and Quentin felt his morning grumpiness start to dissipate when Eliot wrapped an arm loosely around his waist and began to slowly drag his fingertips up and down his spine. He felt a little like a cat being petted, and he stretched and scooted in closer as well. Eliot’s smile softened, and Quentin sighed and closed his eyes as Eliot’s hand made it up into his hair. Maybe he really was part house cat.

“You wanna talk about it?” Eliot asked.

Quentin frowned and asked, “Do we have to?”

Eliot hummed, “No, but I think we probably should. You were kind of scaring me last night.”

Quentin opened his eyes and could immediately tell from Eliot’s face that he was being honest. He said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“It’s okay,” Eliot said, “I was just worried about you. So, do you wanna tell me what happened in timeline 23?”

Resigning himself to recounting the ordeal, he settled back into his pillow. He started, “Well, the beast was already dead when we got there.”

Eliot’s eyes narrowed as he asked, “What?”

“Yeah,” Quentin said, “turns out he killed 23 me and Julia, and then you killed him.”

“Wow,” Eliot said, “who knew I was such a badass?”

Quentin tried to smile at Eliot’s joke, but he got the feeling it probably looked more like a grimace. Instead, he said, “No, El. You killed him, but you didn’t have enough power to do the rhinemann ultra by yourself, so you became a niffin. You were the beast that Alice brought us there to kill.”

Eliot’s face fell immediately, and he said, “Oh shit.”

Quentin started talking quickly then, determined to just get through the worst parts of it all. He said, “So, you got the seventh key and used it to kill a bunch of magicians apparently, and Margo and Penny died trying to power the spell to stop you. Julia, uh, gave you her shade though, and I convinced you to give me the key. Then she boxed you.”

Eliot stared at him for a moment with an unreadable expression on his face as he processed all of that. Then he scooted forward quickly and wrapped both arms around Quentin, crushing him against his chest. Quentin had to wiggle a bit from the sudden change in position, but he managed to free one arm enough to wrap it around Eliot’s waist as well and settle into his embrace more comfortably.

“Q, I’m so sorry,” Eliot whispered.

Quentin squeezed him tighter and said, “It’s okay. We’re both here now.”

Eliot sighed into the top of his head and said, “I don’t know if I could have done that if it was you.”

“It really fucking sucked,” Quentin told him, “but it’s not like I had a choice.”

Eliot was quiet at first, and then he said, “We always have a choice, but you somehow always make the brave one.”

Quentin wasn’t exactly sure how to respond to that. He hadn’t felt incredibly brave as he’d watched Eliot23 say goodbye to him. He’d mostly felt like he’d failed him, like he’d gotten there too late and the only thing left to do was contain the fallout of the nuclear warhead that had already detonated.

How could it be bravery if it couldn’t save the people you loved? If it only hurt in the end?

Then something else occurred to him, and he said, “Oh and uh, I should probably tell you that I kissed him. Eliot23, that is. I hope that’s okay because he was about to die, and it seemed like the right thing to do.”

Eliot didn’t say anything for a second, and then Quentin could feel him shaking with laughter. He turned his head to press a kiss to the side of Quentin’s neck and said, “I’d honestly be a little offended if you hadn’t.”

Quentin laughed then too and pulled back enough to look at Eliot’s face. Eliot was smiling at him, but his eyes were still so full of concern that it made Quentin feel all soft inside. He said, “Really, I’m okay now, I think. I’m just happy to be back. I love you so much. You know that, right?”

Eliot brought his hand up to brush back his hair and said, “I love you too, Q. And it’s okay, you know, if you’re not okay about all of that. It was pretty fucked up, by the sound of it.”

Quentin had maybe forgotten about this part of being with Eliot; the part where he didn’t have to pretend. Most people ask how you are as a courtesy when they really just want to hear you say that you’re fine so that they can feel like they’ve done their duty of checking in. Eliot was different though. He was maybe the most empathetic person Quentin had ever met. 

They’d gotten to spend a lifetime growing together through the good and the fucked up times, and he was having a sudden realization about how lucky he was to be getting to do that again.

Overcome with the gratitude of it all, Quentin leaned in and kissed him. They were still wrapped up in each other, not even an inch between them under the sheets from head to toe, and Quentin let himself get absolutely lost in that feeling, the safety of being surrounded by Eliot. Eliot immediately responded and pulled him impossibly closer, gripping his waist and the back of his head. It was the kind of kiss that could have been building up to something if they weren’t taking their time about it. As it was though, Quentin pulled away after what felt like a short amount of time, leaving only their noses brushing as he caught his breath.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you,” he whispered. “I know people say that, but honestly, I don’t.”

It was a little scary, but it was true.

“Let’s not find out,” Eliot told him, like that was something he could promise.

Quentin said, “That sounds good to me.”

They spent as much of the afternoon as they could manage tucked away in bed before Quentin’s stomach started to growl and Margo started to grow more impatient. Apparently Tick’s campaign was getting aggressive, and they needed to start striking back.

Once they were all gathered in the main cabin, Margo recapped for him, “While you were gone, we all found out that Tick is a fucking policy genius, apparently.”

She handed Quentin a piece of parchment covered in calligraphy, and he squinted down at the small writing. He asked, “Is this even in English?”

“Your guess is as good as mine,” Margo said.

Eliot said, “The good news is that the average Fillorian doesn’t have a clue what the hell he’s talking about either, so we took advantage of that and made things a little more exciting.”

Eliot handed him a stack of photoshopped flyers proclaiming things such as free healthcare, ten bags of grain per year for every citizen, and, confusingly, boat parties.

Quentin looked up at him and tried to fight back a smile as he asked, “How exactly do you plan on following through with all of this?”

“Please, everyone knows all politicians lie,” Eliot told him with a dismissive wave of his hand. “You just say whatever gets you elected and go from there.”

“If you say so,” Quentin replied.

He sat the flyers aside and said, “I have some news too, about the sixth key. The Fairy Queen told Julia that it’s in the fairy realm, and they won’t give it to us.”

“Those fairy fuckers. Of course they don’t want to be helpful,” Margo replied with a heavy eyeroll.

Eliot, ever the diplomat, said, “Well, we’re just going to have to offer her something she wants in return then.”

“Like what?!” Margo asked. “The bitch already has my eye!”

“True,” Eliot conceded, “but everyone has a price. We just have to figure out what hers is.”

“If we don’t win this election, that won’t even fucking matter,” Margo shot back.

“I can maybe help with that.”

They all jumped and spun around to see Julia standing in the cabin behind them.

Quentin asked, “Jules, how did you get here?” 

“I don’t know,” she said a little tentatively. “I felt like you guys needed my help, and then here I was. It’s been a weird morning.”

She waved at all of them in her slightly dorky way, and Quentin couldn’t help the grin that tugged at his lips. He said, “Okay, then, welcome to team children of Earth.”

It was Julia’s idea to start by rebuilding the forest of sentient trees. The one thing that she truly had to offer Fillory was the thing that made the children of Earth special in the first place: magic. She’d used it once to harm the people who lived there, and that was a reputation they needed to heal. So, accompanied by Margo, they sent her out on an apology tour of sorts.

That left Quentin and Eliot alone with a little bit of time on their hands, which they were using very wisely. 

To be specific, they were making out on the sofa in the main cabin of the Muntjac. 

Quentin kind of got the feeling that Eliot was still worried about him, even if he wasn’t quite saying it. He really was doing fine though, for the most part. Timeline 23 was fading from his mind more with every second that he spent here with his friends in his real life. The thing was, he knew realistically that none of the other 39 timelines had ended well, and putting it into that perspective helped a little bit because otherwise, he’d be sad forever if he tried to grieve over every single doomed version of them and their friends. They were all alive and doing relatively well here in the timeline that mattered, so really, he was coping.

However, if this was how Eliot wanted to comfort him, Quentin wasn’t exactly hating it. 

“It feels like we should be doing something important right now,” Quentin mumbled, against Eliot’s mouth.

Eliot silenced him with another kiss as his hands wandered down his sides from where he was hovering over him. As he slipped one hand under the hem of Quentin’s shirt, he replied, “This is important. How are we supposed to keep up the team morale if I can’t kiss my incredibly sexy boyfriend?”

Quentin halfheartedly rolled his eyes and scoffed, but it wasn’t very convincing considering he had one leg wrapped around the backs of Eliot’s thighs holding him against him. 

Maybe Eliot was right, even if it was an indulgent thought. They were technically a new couple in this timeline at least, and they’d barely had the chance to enjoy it. It was somewhat easy to forget that in the middle of the adventure of the week, but it only took one touch for Quentin to remember just how much he wanted to be touching Eliot pretty much all the time. It was somewhat of a miracle to get to relive that honeymoon period for a second time, and the fact that they’d done it all before didn’t make it any less exciting. Honestly, who knew what was waiting for them at the end of the quest, so what could it hurt to take the good where you could get it?

He’d just about let himself be convinced by that logic and by Eliot’s lips grazing his jawline when there was an interrupting thud on the other side of the cabin.

“Jesus, get a room!”

Eliot quickly sat up, and they both turned their heads to see Penny standing a few feet away, looking very much alive.

“Oh my god, you’re back,” Quentin said.

Penny grumbled, “Yeah, and you’re half naked, which was not what I wanted to see today.”

He looked down and noticed that Eliot had in fact gotten his shirt most of the way unbuttoned while he wasn’t paying attention. Eliot laughed at his obvious embarrassment though as he pecked him on the lips one last time and rose from the sofa, looking as put together as ever. It was honestly a little irritating how he could manage that.

“Maybe you should knock before you just appear somewhere,” Eliot pointed out.

“Yeah, it’s nice to see you too,” Penny replied.

Eliot walked over to their makeshift bar apparently in favor of making them all drinks for the occasion, and Quentin tried in vain to fix his disheveled hair as he sat up. He finished doing up his buttons though while Penny watched, fully unimpressed. Finally, because the silence was uncomfortable, he asked, “So, uh, what are you doing here?”

Penny rolled his eyes and said, “I’m trying to find out what’s happening with getting magic back, genius. Alice said you were in charge of that whole thing.”

“Well,” he said, “we’re a little stuck right now on the sixth key.”

“So you were looking for it in Waugh’s mouth?” Penny asked him, his tone as sarcastic as ever.

“Oh my God, shut up, Penny,” he retorted.

He was aiming for an offended tone, but the more he fell into their familiar banter, the more it was hitting him that Penny really was back and that maybe he’d really missed him. He felt a tiny little smile tugging at the corners of his mouth that he wanted to be embarrassed about, but before he could get the chance, Penny’s scowl turned into half of a smirk as well.

Eliot reappeared then with three drinks carefully balanced in his hands and chided, “Play nice, children. We’ve got enough drama to go around already.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Penny asked him.

He’d wandered over to the armchair though and picked up the drink Eliot had sat down for him, so Quentin figured a truce was in place. 

“Oh, you haven’t heard?” Eliot asked as he settled back in next to Quentin. “We’re now the former monarchs of Fillory.”

Penny tried, “I’m sorry?”

“You should be,” Eliot said. “You’re on a fugitive ship right now.”

“Okay,” Penny replied, clearly not very concerned, “so what else did I miss?”

Quentin recited, “Well let’s see, the sixth key is in the fairy realm, which they won’t give to us, and Alice is working with the Library apparently even though we need her to finish this quest.”

“Huh,” Penny said, “so basically, we’re fucked.”

“Yeah, pretty much,” Eliot replied.

“Not for long after what Julia just pulled off.”

They all turned to see Margo and Julia standing at the entrance to the cabin.

Penny jumped a little as he asked, “Where the fuck did you come from?!”

Julia waved and gave him a smug little smile as she said, “You’re not the only one who can travel now.”

He picked up his glass to take another sip and muttered, “You’re dead for one fucking week…”

Julia ignored his snark as she walked over to him and lifted her hands above his head. She closed her eyes, like she was feeling something in the air around him. Quentin watched as she opened them a few seconds later and smiled. With a measure of awe in her voice, she said, “Your body is working perfectly. It’s incredible.”

“Yeah, thanks to you,” Penny said, and his voice lost some of its edge. He continued, “Thank you for giving a shit about me.”

She smiled and said, “You’re welcome.”

Then Penny almost seemed awkward for a second before he replied, “Uh, Kady wanted me to thank you too.”

Julia’s smile faltered as she nodded. She said, “It’s the least I could do.”

Quentin barely had enough time to wonder what the sudden tension in that exchange was about before Margo plopped down on his other side and immediately dropped her feet into his lap. He turned to glare at her.

She was giving him a look that was just begging him to have a problem with it, so he resigned himself and leaned back into the cushions with a sigh as Eliot reached over to squeeze her ankle in greeting. He supposed he should be taking it as a compliment that the two of them still so easily welcomed him into their space like he belonged there. They’d been doing it since he met them in first year, and he still marveled at the whole concept of it sometimes, especially now after all they’d been through. It was nice, even when it was annoying.

“So,” Margo said, “now that we’ve charmed the citizens of Fillory with Julia’s goddess powers, what are we doing about the last key, since Tinkerbitch is being a twat about it?”

Julia said, “I’m not sure she really has a choice. It’s the only thing keeping the fairy realm stable.”

“Alright, if she won’t give it to us, then we steal it,” Margo said.

“We can’t do that!” Julia argued indignantly. “All the fairies would die!”

Margo shrugged as she replied, “Collateral damage.”

Julia frowned at her, and Penny said, “Damn, that’s cold.”

Margo pointed at her eyepatch as she said, “You could say I’m adequately motivated.”

Sensing that things were definitely getting out of hand, Julia apparently decided to divert the discussion as she said, “We may have a bigger problem to worry about anyway even if we do get the key.”

All eyes turned to her, and she clarified, “The monster the other Eliot warned us about?”

Eliot turned to Quentin and said, “You didn’t mention that part.”

He’d maybe been a little too shaken up to get to the full story before. Now seemed as good a time as any, though, to share with the class. So, he explained, “The seventh key apparently gives you visions of the future. The Eliot from timeline 23 said it showed him how the quest ends and that there’s a monster waiting for us behind the door.”

“Of course there is,” Eliot replied, “because nothing could just be easy.”

Margo asked, “A monster behind a door? He couldn’t be any more specific than that?”

Quentin shrugged, “Apparently not.”

Margo reached her leg across him to kick Eliot’s side, and he yelped. He leaned around Quentin to ask, “What was that for?!”

“For being fucking annoying in every timeline,” she shot back.

Eliot flipped her off, and she grinned at him.

“Okay, well, it doesn’t really matter what it is,” Quentin said, “because we don’t have a choice but to continue the quest.”

“I get that,” Julia said, “but he seemed pretty serious about his warning. It was practically his dying wish. If we bring back magic but end the whole world in the process, is it really worth it? Maybe we _should_ be looking for another way.”

“Maybe Alice could ask her Library buddies,” Margo quipped. “I’m sure they know something about it.”

She was obviously being sarcastic, but Quentin suddenly had an idea. He said, “No, I think she should ask them.”

Margo asked him, “Did you hit your head in timeline 23?”

He rolled his eyes in her general direction and explained, “Penny could follow her on the astral plane, and then we can find out what she’s really up to.”

“That’s not a bad plan, actually,” Eliot said. He wrapped his arm around Quentin’s shoulders and nosed at the side of his head as he said, “I might just allow you into my royal cabinet after all.”

Quentin laughed and said, “Thanks.”

Eliot replied, “It wasn’t guaranteed.”

“So,” Julia said, “who’s gonna get Alice to go to the Library? Because she’s not really my biggest fan.”

A deafening silence fell over the group, and Quentin only had a few seconds before realizing that all eyes were on him.

“No,” he said, “if she doesn’t like Jules, then she _hates_ me right now. There’s no way she’d do anything I asked.”

“She doesn’t have to like you,” Penny pointed out. “She just has to be curious enough to find out if you’re telling the truth or not.”

“It could work,” Julia agreed.

He looked between Margo and Eliot for back up, but surprisingly, both of them looked like they agreed as well. 

"Oh, honey," Margo said, "she's definitely not gonna talk to either of us. Besides, this was your idea." 

Eliot nodded, and he had to admit they probably had a point. Traitors. He sighed and resigned himself to what was sure to be a very awkward conversation as he said, “Fine, I’ll talk to her.”

“Thanks Q,” Julia replied.

“Don’t thank me yet,” he grumbled.

When he stepped through the clock portal and into the Cottage, he was mentally rehearsing how he was going to get this conversation over with as quickly as possible. It wasn’t Alice he immediately came face to face with though.

“Oh, Quentin, hi.”

Standing in front of him, like she’d apparently been about to go through the portal herself, was Fen. She was dressed in remarkably Earth clothes that looked a lot like maybe she’d borrowed them from Julia, and it was kind of throwing him. She looked better though than the last time he’d seen her. Which, come to think of it, had been quite awhile.

“Hi, Fen,” he said.

He stepped the rest of the way out of the clock and walked around her, not quite sure if he should be stopping to chat or not. He ended up kinda taking a half step backwards before pausing awkwardly as she watched.

To his surprise, she said, “I heard you’re dating my husband.”

He nearly choked on his own saliva as he stammered, “Um, what?”

It’s not like he’d forgotten about Eliot and Fen’s marriage, but maybe he’d sort of compartmentalized it. After being married to Eliot for the better part of fifty years in the mosaic timeline, a lot of their past relationships and dramas had sort of been put into perspective for the two of them. Time had a way of doing that when you spent a lifetime with someone. This wasn’t that timeline though, and the past was very much not distant at all anymore. He had to keep reminding himself of that.

“Oh, chill, I’m just messing with you,” she said, and he exhaled as his sudden spike of anxiety began to fade. She continued, “I like that Earth word, ‘chill.’ It reminds me of jumping into the river on a hot day and wishing all of your problems away.”

Her voice turned wistful somewhere in the middle of that sentence, and Quentin was a little at a loss for how to respond. Her starry eyed look disappeared as she returned her gaze to him though, and she bluntly said, “Eliot never wanted to be with me, and I didn’t get to choose to be with him either. In fact, I plan to ask him for a divorce! Alice taught me what that was.”

Quentin winced a little imagining what must have prompted that conversation between the two of them, but he replied, “Uh, that’s good. For you, I mean. You deserve to be happy, Fen.”

She beamed at him and said, “Thank you, Quentin. I hope you and Eliot will be happy as well.”

He gave her what he hoped was a smile in response and watched as she went on her way through the portal, presumably off to join the others in Fillory. He’d never truly known how to act around her, and he was mostly grateful to have that conversation over with, even if he hadn’t anticipated it.

Speaking of difficult conversations though.

He’d come there to talk to Alice, and it turns out he didn’t have to go very far to find her. She and Kady were sitting in the kitchen when he found his way there, and Alice met his eyes immediately as he stepped through the door.

She closed the book in front of her, abruptly cutting off whatever Kady was saying, and rose from the table.

“Alice, wait,” he sighed, already frankly exhausted by whatever was about to occur.

She paused haltingly to look at him and straightened her skirt.

He cleared his throat and glanced over at Kady as he said, “We need to talk. Alone.”

Kady said, “Whatever.”

She rose from the table, looking less than interested, and disappeared into the common room, which left Alice and Quentin looking awkwardly at each other from opposite sides of the kitchen. He took the first step and pulled out a chair at the table while she watched, looking like she might flee any second. He gestured to the chair across from him, and she chewed on her lower lip before setting her book on the table again and gingerly sitting down.

“What do you want, Quentin?” she asked.

He ran a hand through his hair, tucking it behind his ear, as he said, “I don’t know, I mean, how are you?”

She narrowed her eyes and said, “You didn’t come here to ask me how I am.”

“No, I guess I didn’t,” he replied, giving her a tired look. Maybe it was best to just cut to the chase. He said, “Look, the truth is, we stumbled across some concerning stuff about the end of the key quest. I was hoping the Library might know something that could help.”

Her gaze turned disbelieving as she said, “You’re asking me to go to the Library for help?”

“It can’t hurt,” he shrugged, aiming for nonchalance.

“You hate the Library,” she pointed out.

Oh well, he’d at least tried.

“Yeah, well, you said they want to get magic back too, right? So the quest should be something they care about,” he reasoned.

She stared at him for a moment before finally asking, “What did you find out exactly?”

And so he told her about the seventh key and what Eliot23 had said about a monster behind the door. She didn’t show any real emotion as he relayed the details of it, and he was starting to wonder if their plan to pique her curiosity was going to work. Maybe she hated him so much that she wanted nothing to do with him at all at this point, even if it did have to do with the potential end of the world.

After he’d finished though, she studied him for a moment. Then she asked, “Have you really thought about what’s going to happen when you turn magic back on?”

He frowned as he replied, “I mean, magic will be back?”

“And what about your dad’s cancer?” she asked. “You turn magic back on, and it’s going to come back. Are you prepared for that?”

And that… wasn’t what he’d been expecting her to say. At all. He felt a little like a bomb had gone off inside his mind, and he was reeling in the shocked silence of it as he processed her words.

He said, “There’s no guarantee that that will happen.”

She almost looked sympathetic as some of her layers of discomfort fell away in response to that. She said, “Q, I know you love magic, but haven’t you considered that it’s maybe not worth all the pain that comes along with it?”

“Of course it’s worth it,” he replied immediately.

He allowed himself to consider it for a moment though, a world where magic never came back. Maybe she was right, and he suspected she was, that his dad might go on to live a long and cancer-free life if magic never returned. 

Maybe he and Eliot could get normal people jobs and live in a little apartment in Brooklyn and have weekend barbeques with all of their friends. Maybe they’d work nine to five and take yearly vacations and have a dog or a cat. He could imagine that life, and it would probably be a good one. 

But magic was the core of who he was, the beating heart that had given him a purpose and made him feel like maybe he really was alive for a reason. Like he was part of some bigger plan that made all of the pain worth it. It had brought him to all of his friends, and it had brought him to Fillory. How could he, or any of them, really go on for the next fifty or so years knowing it was out there but just out of their reach? 

“I wish I agreed with you,” she said.

He looked back at her almost forlorn expression and honestly, really thought maybe he understood her for just a moment. 

She wasn’t like him, lost and looking for magic to fix her. She’d grown up with magic, and it had never given her anything she’d been looking for. It had taken her brother, her dad, and even her own life to an extent. She probably really could live the rest of her life without magic and be better off for it. God knows she was smart enough to do whatever she set her mind to with or without it. That part of her had always been inspiring, if not terrifying at the same time.

It reminded him once again just why he’d been drawn to her in the first place, which made him think about what Alice from timeline 23 had said about them becoming friends again.

“I miss having you in my life,” he told her honestly. 

She looked a little uncomfortable as she folded her arms over her chest and asked, “Where did that come from?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged, “I mean, we never really worked, you know? And I get that. I just think that maybe if we wouldn’t have spent so much time trying to make us work, we could have been really great friends instead.”

She looked a little surprised, although her expression softened considerably. He let her mull that over for a second before she exhaled and leaned back into her chair. 

Finally, she said, “I’ve thought about that too. I miss how things were with us before Brakebills South.”

He smiled at her and felt an immense relief when she sort of smiled back. He said, “We make a really great team when we’re on the same side, don’t we?”

“We do,” she agreed. Then she sighed and said, “I’m done fighting with you and the others, Q. If you want to finish this quest and bring back magic, then I’ll help, but I just want you to be realistic about what’s going to happen when you do.”

He nodded. She was right, of course, as she usually was. It was pretty naive for him to plow forward without even taking a moment to really consider the consequences. The chances were very high that his dad’s cancer was going to come back, and that was a risk Quentin was going to have to be okay with taking. It was unimaginable, but then again, so was giving up magic.

“Thank you,” he told her sincerely, “I think I needed to be reminded of that.”

She smiled slightly and nodded at him. 

“I’ll ask the Library about what Eliot23 said about the door and the monster,” she promised. “If they don’t know, then they might at least be able to help us find someone who does.”

He gave her a tight smile in response as he remembered the original purpose of this conversation. He almost felt bad about sending Penny to spy on her, but ultimately, he wasn’t sure one civil conversation could undo all of the mistrust he’d felt around her lately. If she was planning something, then they still needed to know.

So, he said, “I appreciate that, really.”

She nodded and asked, “Is that all you wanted?”

“Yeah, I guess,” he replied.

She stood up and collected her book then, but she stopped before leaving the room and looked at him. She said, “I don’t think I’m happy for you and Eliot right now, but I think that I probably will be. Some day. You deserve good things, Q, so I hope that he’s good to you.”

He hadn’t been expecting her to say that at all, so he was a little taken aback as he replied, “Thanks, Alice. That means a lot.”

Eliot _was_ good to him, and good for him, in so many ways, but he didn’t think she actually wanted to hear about any of that. So he left the conversation there and felt gratified when she gave him a small nod in return.

Before she left though, he remembered something else he’d been meaning to ask her.

“Hey, how did you get Penny out of the Underworld anyway?”

She paused at the doorway and looked at him a little hesitantly before she replied, “Like you said, I have connections.”

He laughed in disbelief because he was starting to think that she really could pull off anything, as terrifying as it was. She smiled in return and then disappeared into the hallway. Maybe they weren’t okay yet, but he really felt like they would be eventually, and wasn’t that something?

As he stepped back through the portal to let Penny know that their plan was a go, his head was still full of thoughts of what she’d said about his dad though. He hadn’t been unaware of that situation exactly, but it hadn’t been at the front of his mind because finishing the quest had seemed so far away that it wasn’t really something that he needed to deal with yet. One problem at a time was about all he could handle these days. 

They were reaching the end now though, against all odds, and now that he’d been forced to think about it, he couldn't quite make himself stop. It sort of put a damper on any excitement he might have been feeling about being so close to their goal.

Then he stepped through the portal and onto the Muntjac, only to be greeted by Margo proudly announcing, “We know how we’re gonna get the sixth key.”

And the reality hit him like a ton of bricks.


	5. like pieces into place

Margo’s plan, as it turns out, was actually more Fen’s plan. They’d all kind of forgotten about Fray, Fen and Eliot’s not daughter, and her connection to the fairies, but once Fen pointed it out, it actually made perfect sense to see if she could help at least get the queen’s attention. Of all of them, she had the best chance.

Julia managed to track her down before she went back to Earth at a bar on the outskirts of town in a rural part of northern Fillory, and so that’s where the Muntjac was headed.

“Does it feel weird?” Quentin asked. “To be going to see her after everything?”

Eliot was tucked up next to him on the window seat where they’d settled for the trip, and he turned around to look down at him. He said, “Honestly? Not really. I mean, it definitely makes me the world’s worst father to say this, but she never really felt like my kid. At least not like…”

He trailed off, and Quentin’s heart clenched at the unspoken rest of that sentence. He twisted around in Eliot’s arms and asked, “Not like Teddy?”

Eliot swallowed and nodded. 

“Yeah,” he said, “not like Teddy.”

Quentin smiled up at him and took one of his hands, intertwining their fingers together. He said, “You were a great father, El. The very best.”

Eliot squeezed his hand and smiled back at him. It didn’t quite reach his eyes, but it was the kind of smile that Eliot always gave him when Quentin told him good things about himself that he didn’t quite believe. Quentin knew from a lifetime of experience that that insecurity would never completely go away, even after years of reassurances. That was okay though. He’d committed himself to a lifetime of reminding Eliot how good he was once, and he was more than okay with doing it again.

Eliot finally replied, “Thanks, Q.”

Quentin reached up to kiss him on the lips, and Eliot smiled at him as he pulled away. He settled back into Eliot’s side after that, and they fell into a comfortable silence for the rest of the trip as Eliot’s hand absentmindedly rubbed circles into his arm. Quentin’s mind was far from silent though. 

He was thinking about family, about Teddy and the grandkids, and also about his own father. It was all buzzing around in his mind, a symphony only growing in volume ever since Alice brought it up back on Earth.

He’d apparently worn himself out with all the circling thoughts though by the time they reached their destination, because he woke up some time later to someone gently shaking his shoulder. He opened his eyes to find that his head was pillowed against Eliot’s chest, and when he sat up, Margo stopped as she was passing by to stare him down from a few feet away.

“You two are so adorable that I’m going to throw up,” she said, matter of fact. 

Newly free from being used as a pillow, Eliot sat up too as he stretched his arms and replied, “You know you’re always welcome to cuddle with us, Bambi.”

She replied dryly, “I’d rather pluck out my other eyeball. Now come on, we have a negotiation to win.”

Quentin laughed as she walked off and said, “I’m not sure the point of a negotiation is to win.”

“Then you’ve never negotiated with Margo,” Eliot replied.

Quentin grinned as he turned to look at him and asked, “Are you ready for this?”

“At least one of us has to be the diplomatic one,” Eliot said, “so I guess I have to be.”

So, the three of them, plus Fen, found themselves trekking about a quarter of a mile through the woods until they reached a clearing that opened up to a bustling tavern. 

“Is she even old enough to be in a bar?” Eliot asked as they surveyed the establishment.

Fen looked at him, clearly confused, and asked, “Why wouldn’t she be?”

“Right, I forgot they come out of the womb addicted to opium here,” he mused.

Quentin was thinking about the first time Teddy had come home from school at roughly ten years old talking about drinking carrot wine on a field trip, and he and Eliot had nearly lost their minds until they’d figured out that apparently that was just a normal thing in Fillory. They’d definitely put their own rules in place after that as far as alcohol consumption went, but they’d still let him have a drink every now and again for special occasions. 

As he became a teenager though, Eliot reasoned with him that Teddy was going to do it anyways, whether they allowed him to or not, and Quentin had eventually warmed up to his logic and eased up on the rules in favor of Teddy not having to hide things from them. It was just another example of Eliot being a good father, honestly, because Quentin’s every impulse was to keep Teddy away from anything potentially dangerous at all costs. Eliot had a lot to say though about letting him form healthy limits and associations with addictive substances, the way Eliot had never been allowed to do when growing up. He didn’t want Teddy to feel like he couldn’t talk to them about anything. 

They balanced each other out well that way, as parents, which was just another thing that Quentin now had circling around his mind.

When they got inside the tavern though, they realized quickly that not only was Fray there, she was working behind the bar. She sat four drinks down in front of them and said, “These are on the house, for helping me get away from the Fairy Queen and saving my life.”

Eliot cleared his throat before any of them could say anything about that and said, “Thank you, Fray.”

Quentin picked his glass up and took a sip as she allowed a sort of smile to grace her face. It looked a little unnatural, but he could tell that she was probably being genuine. She’d never really been what he would call normal when it came to human interactions.

Margo wandered off pretty much immediately, apparently distracted by the actual bear taking drink orders at the other end of the bar, which left Quentin, Eliot, and Fen to get to the real reason for their visit with Fray.

When they explained that they needed to speak to the Fairy Queen though, Fray’s reaction wasn’t exactly what they’d been hoping for.

She recoiled, horrified, as she said, “No! The last time I saw her she threatened to _murder_ me.”

“I know, but glass half full, she didn’t actually go through with it,” Eliot said. Quentin elbowed him sharply in the ribs, and he cleared his throat in response and infused a calmness into his voice as he leaned forward towards her. He said, “I can see why you might be hesitant to reach out, but this is really important, and she won’t listen to us.”

“And you think she’ll listen to me?” Fray scoffed. “Being sent to you ruined everything. I can’t go back to the fairies now, and I don’t fit in with the humans. Why do you think I work in an animal bar?”

Maybe they had been a little naive in expecting Fray to jump on board with their plan, in retrospect. Fen apparently decided to try a different approach.

She asked, “You must have had some fairy siblings you still talk to, right? Maybe one of them could help instead.”

To Quentin’s surprise, she looked even more confused by that. She said, “There were no fairy children in the realm, only other humans bargained away from their real parents like me.”

And there was just something about that that didn’t sit right. Quentin turned to look at Eliot and saw that his mind seemed to be working it out as well. He looked up quickly at about the same time that it clicked for Quentin.

“That’s why they were terraforming,” he said. “They can’t have children in the fairy realm.”

Quentin agreed, “They need to settle in Fillory or they’re going to go extinct.”

Eliot grinned at him, and Quentin felt himself growing a little giddy as well. 

He said, “I think we just found our bargaining chip.”

“I think you’re right,” Eliot agreed.

Fen asked, “But how are we going to get her here?”

They all turned back to Fray, who was looking incredibly flighty still.

Quentin tried, “Fray, this could really help a lot of people. I know you feel alone right now, but it might help if there was actually peace between humans and the fairies. What we’re trying to offer the Fairy Queen could make that possible.”

She stared him down for an uncomfortable moment, looking frankly way more intimidating than she had any right to be. God, Quentin thought she really could have been Eliot’s daughter with that look in her eye.

“That's kind,” she finally said, “but just so you know, I’m not alone.”

“What do you mean?” Fen asked.

She gestured around her as she explained, “The talking animals took me in. They gave me a home and a family. I may not fit in with the humans, but neither do they, and they’ve taught me that that doesn’t mean that we don’t matter.”

“That’s… really touching, actually,” Quentin replied. 

Eliot reached forward to gently rub his knuckles across her jaw and said, “In that case, I’ll tell you what I wish my father had said to me. I’m so glad that you’ve found somewhere you belong.”

Fray smiled at him then, really actually smiled, and said, “Thanks, Dad.”

Eliot grimaced a little bit at that, and Quentin laughed under his breath. Fen looked a little emotional despite herself, and it was all heartwarming enough that of course, Margo chose that exact moment to walk back over to them.

“I love that bear,” she said, pulling up the chair next to Eliot and sitting down.

“Yay bears,” Eliot replied, waving his hand in the air dismissively, “but we were kind of having a moment here.”

“Humbledrum is a very respected member of the animal community,” Fray explained.

Margo replied, “Well, I certainly respect his taste in alcohol.”

“So, uh, Fray,” Quentin started, trying to get them back on track, “will you help us talk to the Fairy Queen?”

She huffed.

“I can get her here,” she conceded, “but it’s up to you guys after that.”

An opening was really all they could ask for, so they agreed and settled in to wait and formulate their plan.

By the time she arrived, the four other them were leaning against the back of the bar with Fray waiting in front of them to greet her.

“Thank you for coming,” she said, “I actually have nothing to say to you.”

The Fairy Queen didn’t seem surprised in the slightest as she said, “I know what you want, and I can’t give it to you. I told Julia about our key to give you a chance to give up on your quest.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening,” Margo replied, placing a hand on her hip as she stared her down.

“We, uh, have a counter-offer,” Quentin said, “for the key.”

The Fairy Queen directed her attention to him, and he couldn’t help but squirm a little under her calculating gaze. She said, “I can’t imagine that you have anything that would be of use to me, but go on.”

Eliot took over and said, “We’ll allow you and the rest of the fairies a nice, quiet, and moist as hell spot in Fillory to settle, in exchange for the key.”

The Fairy Queen’s eyebrows raised in surprise at that, but she replied, “Why would I want to do that when I could just wait until Fillory eventually falls apart and take it for myself? Our lifespans dwarf even the dwarves. We don’t need to make compromises with you humans when we can simply wait for what we want and take it. _All_ of it.”

“Oh, but you can’t, can you?” Margo asked. “Because Fray here tells us that there are no fairy children in the fairy realm.”

“That’s why you planted your eggs in the Northern Orchard, isn’t it?” Eliot asked, “Because you can’t reproduce in the fairy realm. Without Fillory, you go extinct.”

Margo added, “If you don’t act soon, there won’t be any fairies left to take over Fillory, and I’m sorry but we both know that your egg hole’s only getting dustier.”

The Fairy Queen set her lips in a hard line as she stared them down. She clearly hadn’t anticipated them figuring out that little detail, and they all knew they’d reached an impasse. Quentin had to resist the urge to cross his fingers behind the bar as they waited for her response.

Finally, she said, “You don’t have the authority to make that offer. Tick Pickwick speaks for Fillory now, and he has no interest in a deal.”

“Not for long,” Eliot said. “Once the election is over, I’ll be the High King again, and you have my word that we’ll honor our deal.” He stood up tall, looking every bit like a king, and asked, “So, what do you say?”

She sighed, and Quentin felt a rush of hope as she replied, “You have a deal. Win the election, and the key will be yours as soon as the last fairy has been moved to Fillory.”

Eliot nodded and said, “We’ll be in touch.”

And with that settled, all that was really left to do was win the election. For better or for worse, the results were set to be announced the next morning.

Eliot spent practically all night that night pacing across his and Quentin’s bedroom on the Muntjac.

“El, come lay down,” Quentin tried.

Eliot barely glanced at him before trekking back to the other side of the room, and Quentin sighed.

Eliot asked, “What if we lose this election?”

“Then I guess we’ll figure something else out,” Quentin shrugged.

“You say that like it’s easy,” Eliot shot back.

Quentin laughed a little as he replied, “Nothing is ever fucking easy, but we always figure it out.”

Eliot slowed to look at him finally and asked, “Aren’t you getting tired of that? Figuring things out after everything goes horribly wrong?”

“Yeah,” Quentin allowed, “but I think that’s kind of what life is. Doing the best you can and then figuring out what the next step is when it all goes to shit.”

Eliot grinned at him a little and finally turned to make his way over to his side of the bed.

As he sat down, he asked, “When did you get so philosophical?”

“I majored in philosophy, you know,” Quentin pointed out.

Eliot stared at him for a minute and then said, “Huh, I think I did know that, actually.”

Quentin realized then that he’d never told Eliot that here, in this lifetime, but he remembered them having a conversation about it once while working on the mosaic about a year in. It was a weird feeling, knowing there were two sets of lives living in his mind. He wondered if he’d ever get used to it.

“Anyways,” he said, “you’re going to win, I know it. But even if you don’t, we’re not going to give up on Fillory or on the quest.”

Eliot scooted forward on the bed, throwing a leg over Quentin’s and placing a warm, steady hand on his chest. Quentin leaned a little closer into his side. 

In a softer voice, Eliot said, “Thank you, for believing in me.”

Quentin reached up to take Eliot’s hand that was over his heart and laced their fingers together as he replied, “Always.”

The following morning, Rafe requested permission to board the Muntjac. All of them gathered to hear what he had to say, Eliot in the center of the small sofa with Quentin at his side and Margo and Fen standing behind them with baited breath.

Standing before them in the center of the main cabin, Rafe announced, “I am here to deliver the official election results.”

Quentin reached over and took Eliot’s hand, squeezing tightly when Eliot wrapped his up in a vice grip.

For all his talk the night before, he really wasn’t sure what they were going to do if Eliot didn’t win this. They really needed it, not only for the sake of Fillory but for the whole entire quest. If they couldn’t get the sixth key, then it would have all been for nothing. Everything they’d sacrificed, everything they’d done. They’d have to find another way, but what if there actually wasn’t one?

Eliot had been up in the polls after Julia’s help, sure, but polls didn’t guarantee a win.

Rafe continued, “Eliot has lost.”

And there it was, their worst fears confirmed. Quentin’s heart felt like it actually stopped for a second, followed by a terrible sinking feeling in his chest. He glanced over at Eliot and watched the way he took it in, pressing his lips together in a hard line and trying desperately not to react. His grip on Quentin’s hand tightened.

“Uh,” Rafe continued, “Tick has _also_ lost.”

All of their heads shot up.

Verbalizing what they were all thinking, Margo demanded, “Explain. Now.”

Rafe turned to her with a hint of a smile on his face as he said, “Our new High King… is Margo.”

Slowly, they all turned to look at her. She looked, for once, absolutely speechless.

“But I,” she stuttered, “I wasn't even on the ballot.”

“You won as a write-in,” Rafe explained.

Her mouth hung open as she processed that before asking, “Who wrote me in?”

Rafe said, “The talking animals. It seems you were the only human on the campaign trail who stopped to listen to their concerns.”

“You mean that drunk bear?” she asked, still sounding absolutely bewildered.

“Humbledrum, yes,” Rafe agreed. “You see, the talking animals have long been ignored by the government of Fillory. They believe if there’s finally someone in power who will represent them, they might finally be treated as equals. No one has ever bothered to reach out to them before, until you.”

Margo seemed to need a minute to take all that in, but Fen surmised, “So, the human vote basically means nothing in Fillory.”

Rafe said, “Considering there’s never been an election or census before, we had no idea that there were only 50,000 humans in Fillory and upwards of a million talking animals. So… yes.”

While they talked that out though, Quentin was only looking at Eliot, trying to read what was going on in his mind. He’d simply been staring straight ahead the whole time since Rafe had announced Margo’s victory. His grip had loosened a little on Quentin’s hand, but his face was void of emotion. Quentin was starting to get a little worried that maybe he should do something about it but he wasn’t quite sure what.

“On behalf of Abigail, let me be the first to swear loyalty to the new administration.”

He looked over to see Rafe down on one knee, bowing before Margo. Eliot looked up then as well, and Margo reached over to place her hand delicately on his shoulder.

She said, “El… I’m so sorry.”

Eliot didn’t react for a few seconds more, but then he rose from the sofa quickly and knelt before her as well, a smile pulling at his mouth.

Quentin watched with a growing pride in his chest as Eliot reached out for her hand and said, “And allow me to be the second.”

He brought her hand up to his lips and kissed her knuckles with a wide smile before saying, “High King Margo. Long may you reign.”

Margo laughed in relief, and the weight of it filled the entire room.

Later, as they stood by and watched her take the throne to thunderous applause, it all felt so surreal. In a way, it made perfect sense though. If Fillory had to choose a ruler, Quentin honestly wasn’t sure if they could have chosen anyone who would fight to protect them more fiercely. Sure, Eliot was absolutely a good king, but he’d never really chosen that for himself and Quentin wasn’t entirely sure that he wanted it even now beyond feeling an obligation to take up the role. Margo did though. The look on her face as she turned to smile at him and Eliot confirmed that. She was going to be a great king.

Her first order, on behalf of Fillory, was to invite Tick and all of his policy genius to join her cabinet, much to his relief. And her second was to finalize the deal with the Fairy Queen.

“Citizenship for every fairy, full protection of the law, and a seat in the government,” she promised, “but we need the key.”

The Fairy Queen said, “And you shall have it. Once the last fairies have been moved to our new home.”

She started walking towards Margo as she said, “I always saw something in you, even when you didn’t see it in yourself. Now, perhaps you will.”

The Fairy Queen lifted her hand to drift it along the idea of her face, and Margo gasped as she ripped off her eyepatch. She looked around the room, her face in absolute awe.

“You gave me...,” she said, cutting herself off as she continued to look around, “I can, I can see… I can see all sorts of things.”

Quentin and Eliot exchanged a look as the Fairy Queen explained her gift, a fairy eye, and waved her hand to allow Margo to hide it in plain sight. Weirder things had happened to them on this quest, but Margo seemed to be grateful, so Quentin supposed it was a win for them all.

With Fillory back under their control and the promise of the sixth key being practically theirs though, his own sinking feeling about the end of the key quest was coming back.

He’d been so preoccupied with the fairies and the election that he’d almost forgotten what Alice had said, but he hadn’t actually quite managed it. So, he pulled Eliot aside as Margo got to work talking to Fen and Tick.

“There’s something I need to do, before we finish the quest,” he said.

Eliot looked at him carefully, clearly sensing his anxiety, and asked, “What is it?”

Quentin swallowed and met his eyes as he said, “I need to go see my dad, and I was hoping that you might want to come with me.”

Eliot’s eyes widened at first, and he looked taken aback. His hands fidgeted at his sides, and he licked his lips as he stared at Quentin. Finally, he stood a little straighter as he said, “Yeah, Q. I’d love to.”

Quentin felt his whole body slump in relief, and Eliot smiled down at him.

By the time they arrived in New Jersey, Quentin felt a little like he might be losing his mind, the foundations of his resolve shaking a bit. He had no idea how he was supposed to do this. He only knew that he didn’t have a choice. Eliot was as much of a calming presence as he could be beside him, but he knew Eliot was having some nerves of his own. It wasn’t everyday that you met your boyfriend’s dad for the first time to tell him that he was probably going to die.

Jesus, what were their lives?

Together, they made their way up the steps of his childhood home though and made polite small talk as Ted ushered them inside.

“You didn’t tell me you were bringing a boy home when you called, Curly Q,” Ted said, a clear grin on his face.

Quentin flushed, although he could see Eliot smiling from beside him. Eliot leaned forward from the sofa and offered his hand.

He said, “It’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Coldwater. I’ve heard so much about you.”

“Please, call me Ted,” he replied.

Quentin watched them shake hands and took in the smile on his father’s face as he looked at Eliot. It was a real, genuine smile, one that he didn’t see very often, and it made Quentin feel both extremely happy and extremely guilty at the same time. Finally, he was here showing his dad that he’d done one thing very right only to drop the news of something terrible right afterwards.

Getting to the terrible part involved some explanation first though, so he set about the difficult part of explaining Fillory and the quest while Eliot stayed quietly supportive at his side.

Once he’d finished, Ted asked, “If all that’s out there, then what are you doing here?”

Eliot reached over and silently took Quentin’s hand as he explained, “We’re on a quest.”

“In New Jersey?” his father asked skeptically.

“I have a problem,” Quentin said, leaning forward and looking down at the coffee table between them, “and I don’t know what to do. No matter what choice I make, somebody gets hurt.”

“Magic’s gone,” Ted guessed. “Isn’t it?”

Quentin looked up at him, and Ted smiled knowingly.

He said, “I’m not like you, but I felt it when it was gone, and I knew it wasn’t a coincidence when I went into remission a week later.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Quentin told him. “My friends and I, we’re trying to fix it, and we’re getting really close.”

His father stared at him for a long moment as he took in what he’d said, and Quentin forced himself not to look away. Finally, he said, “So, are you here to ask for my permission? To turn it back on?”

Quentin exhaled as he stared at him, and he could see that his father already knew the answer to that.

Still, he felt the need to explain.

He said, “On this quest... I’ve lived a whole life.” He felt Eliot shift towards him as he continued, “Eliot and I, we grew old, and we got married. We had a son, who grew old.” Thinking back on their lifetime together, he felt old all of a sudden. The weight of the years felt like they were pressing down on him as he sighed and asked, “And what was all that for, if it’s not for this?”

Ted looked between the two of them, and Quentin waited as patiently as he could for his response. Finally, he said, “I could tell something was different about you when you walked through the door. You’re not a kid anymore, Q, and you don’t need my permission to do what you know is right.”

Quentin inhaled sharply and nodded. 

“I just wanted to look you in the eye,” he said, “and tell you that I’m sorry. I don’t know what’s gonna happen, but I’m going to do this.”

Ted took a moment then before he looked up, a kind of sad smile on his face.

He asked, “What was his name? Your son.”

Before Quentin could answer, Eliot replied, “We named him after you.”

Ted smiled at both of them then, and Quentin squeezed Eliot’s hand. 

“I’m proud of you, son,” Ted told him. Quentin felt hot tears stinging at his eyes, though he’d been doing his best to keep his emotions in check. Then his father turned to Eliot and said, “And I’m glad I got the chance to meet you, Eliot. I trust that you’ll take care of my boy.”

“Yes, sir,” Eliot replied solemnly, “Quentin means everything to me.”

Quentin didn’t think he’d ever heard Eliot reply to anyone with such formal respect before in his life. It was a little odd to witness if not also extremely endearing. He kind of felt the absurd urge to cry about it, which he promptly decided he was not going to do.

Ted nodded at Eliot with a smile, and Eliot seemed to relax a little bit at his sign of approval. There was a heavy silence for an awkward moment before Ted cleared his throat and said, “Well, since you boys are here, you might as well stay for dinner.”

Quentin exhaled at that, feeling some of the tension leave the room, and felt Eliot do the same beside him. Just for one night, he could be a normal twenty-five year old bringing his boyfriend home for dinner with his father. He figured he and Eliot deserved that much, considering the lack of normalcy in every other part of their relationship. Eliot seemed to think so too, as he stood up to help Quentin’s dad set the table.

Besides, they still had to get the last key from the fairies, and there were still plenty of other problems that they’d yet to figure out as well, like Alice and the monster that was waiting for them. So, considering all of that, the fate of the world could wait another day while Quentin’s father got to know the love of his life.


	6. i saw the scoreboard and ran for my life

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I LOOK PRETTY GOOD FOR A DEAD BITCH! (she's alive!)
> 
> okay, in all seriousness, i'm very sorry for not updating anything lately. idk what's happened to my ability to string words together, but i've been head empty, no thoughts for weeks. mostly i've been preoccupied with the u.s. elections and last minute campaigning so if all the 18+ americans reading this could do me a solid and make sure you're registered to vote right now, that would help me sleep better at night.
> 
> thank you all for sticking around, and i hope to be finishing up this fic and impossible year pretty soon! then i can start sharing the other projects with you that i've been desperately trying to work on because there are....several.

By the time Eliot and Q sent word that they’d be returning to Fillory, Margo told them not to bother because she had the sixth key and was on her way back to Earth.

Eliot asked her, “Are you sure you should be leaving Fillory so soon after the election?”

She waved her hand, dismissing his concern as she replied, “Please, Fen’s got this. I told her just not to declare war or to let Tick out of her sight.”

“Well, that’s comforting,” Eliot replied.

They were gathered in the common room of the Cottage, along with Julia, waiting to find out what Penny’s astral plane field trip to the Library brought to light. If Quentin was honest, he was hoping it was nothing. He’d really wanted to believe Alice when she said that they could trust her. He just wasn’t sure though, and they couldn’t move forward with a shred of uncertainty. The stakes were too high.

So, Penny had followed her to talk to Zelda.

“Hey, Q, can we talk a second?” 

He turned to see Julia standing at the entrance to the hallway, and she gestured behind her hopefully. He glanced over at Eliot and Margo, who were preoccupied with Fillorian politics talk, and said, “Sure.”

He followed her out into the hall, feeling a little more nervous by the second as he watched her wring her hands in front of her. 

“Spit it out, Jules,” he told her.

She sighed and smiled at him.

“So, this whole goddess thing has some strings attached,” she said.

He leaned back against the stairs and replied, “Yeah, that figures. What are the strings?”

She said, “Apparently, in order to complete my journey or whatever, I’m supposed to go with this goddess Iris and… create new worlds, or something.”

Quentin looked at her. She looked nervous about what she was saying and maybe a little scared too, but more than all of that, she looked hopeful. Excited. 

“Holy shit, you’re like a full blown goddess,” he breathed. “I mean, should I, like, bow?”

“Shut up, you dork,” she laughed, and she shoved at his shoulder. “I’m still just me.”

He grinned at her.

“I know,” he replied, “but you’re also like, extremely powerful.”

She nodded and started to wring her hands again. She said, “Q, I know you all need me to finish this quest, and I swear I’m going to be there. I’m just not sure how much I’m going to be around after that. Or between then and now.”

“What are you saying exactly?” he asked.

She stepped towards him and said, “I’m saying that I don’t know if I’m going to always be around to protect you, and with magic still being gone, I don’t like the idea of that.”

He watched as she held out her hands in front of her and brought them gently towards his chest, resting them just above his sternum. He felt the magic go through him, lighting up his body like a sip of water after wandering in the desert for days. He gasped and settled back against the wall.

“What was that?” he asked.

“Enough for a one-off spell,” she told him, “you know, in case a giant Indiana Jones boulder comes hurtling at you. You can fight it off.”

He grinned at her, and said, “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” she replied.

He opened his arms, and she folded against him in a tight hug. He sighed as he placed his chin on her shoulder.

“I love you, Jules,” he said.

She squeezed him tighter and buried her face in his shoulder as she said, “I love you, too.”

They’d barely settled back into the common room with Eliot and Margo when Alice showed up with news about the monster. She breezed into the Cottage like a woman on a mission, not even bothering to sit down as she explained what she’d found out.

“The Library doesn’t know very much,” she told them, looking actually pretty disappointed about it. “Apparently the gods created the Castle at the End of the World, and they never told anyone where it was or what was inside it. It’s real, though. The Library knows that much, and they know that whatever’s inside there is dangerous.”

“So how are we supposed to find out what it is?” Margo asked her.

Alice fidgeted as she replied, “I don’t know. The gods are the only ones who have ever been to the castle, so the only way to find out would be to ask one of them.”

“Well, the only god we know is Bacchus,” Quentin said, half thinking out loud, “but the only way to track him down was his Instagram, which got taken down.”

“Shocker,” Eliot replied.

Quentin clocked the way Alice shot him a wary look, but Eliot didn’t acknowledge it if he noticed.

“Okay well, we’ll just have to figure out another way,” Julia replied. “Thanks for your help, Alice.”

She nodded and looked at Quentin quickly with half of a smile before leaving in as much of a flurry as she came. She was gone for maybe thirty seconds before Penny appeared.

“She’s lying.”

Quentin’s heart dropped right into his stomach as he turned to face him. He’d suspected as much, of course, but it still wasn’t fun to hear it confirmed. 

“Not about the god stuff, that part’s true” Penny explained. “It’s what she’s not telling you. Zelda gave her something called a siphon that she’s supposed to put on the fountain when we turn magic back on. She’s supposed to use Juila’s magic to power it, which could kill her. She didn’t seem excited about it, but she didn’t say no. I think they’ve got something on her.”

“What makes you think that?” Eliot asked.

Penny said, “Zelda told her to remember their deal. I don’t know what that means.”

Julia was looking very uncomfortable, understandably so, and the others looked more disappointed than surprised. Quentin wasn’t sure how he felt. Mostly, he just wished he hadn’t seen this coming.

“I’ll talk to her,” he sighed.

Julia asked, “Q, are you sure that’s a good idea?” 

“No,” he replied, “but someone has to.”

No one could really argue with him about that. They couldn’t just leave her to carry out the Library’s plan. So, later that night, he found Alice alone in the library on campus. He stopped at the doorway and watched as she shuffled through books like she was looking for something. Instead of entering the room, he leaned against the doorframe behind her and braced himself for what was to come. He wasn’t honestly in the mood to beat around the bush this time, given the blatant lies she’d been telling him. 

So, he asked her outright, “What’s a siphon?”

She spun around and asked, “Are you spying on me?”

“Answer the question,” he replied.

She glared at him for a moment before squaring her shoulders as she replied, “It’s a precaution the Library wants to put into place when magic is turned back on.”

“You mean to divert magic to them so that they can control it?” Quentin pressed.

Alice huffed and said, “They’re just trying to help.”

“No, they’re not,” he argued. “When are you going to see that? They don’t want what’s best for us or anyone else, and they never have.”

She stared at him, uncompromising in her stubbornness, so he pressed, “And what about Julia?”

“I wasn’t going to use her magic to do it,” she said. 

“Well, that’s something at least,” he grumbled.

“Have you thought about it yet?” she asked. “About what’s going to happen to your dad?”

He nodded.

“I have, and I’m still going to do this,” he told her.

Her glare softened a little, but she still replied, “I wish I had your faith, Q. I really do.”

He stared at her, trying to figure out what he could say to change her mind. Really, he knew that he couldn't. Once Alice decided on something, there wasn’t much anyone could do to convince her she was wrong. He did have one option though. He could threaten to leave her out of the final part of the quest, which might just be the only leverage he still had over her. She couldn’t carry out the Library’s plan if she wasn’t there to do it.

“Look, Alice,” he said, pushing off of the door frame and walking towards her. She watched him warily. He continued, “There are seven keys, and we have seven questers. In theory, we need you.” He stopped in front of her. “But Julia’s a goddess. We’ll find a way to do this with or without you, and unless you hand over the siphon right now, you’re out.”

Her mouth fell open just a little as she glared at him, and he folded his arms over his chest in challenge. He held her gaze, refusing to fold until she acknowledged that her only choice was to walk away or comply. He hated having to draw this line. He wanted to trust her implicitly, that she was on their side and doing what’s best. That ship had sailed though the second she’d lied to him.

Finally, she sat down her bag on a table and dug inside it. After a moment, she pulled out a small object.

“Here,” she said.

She shoved what was apparently the siphon at him, and he took it. Her eyes tracked it in his hands as he looked up at her.

“This doesn’t mean I trust you,” he said.

“I know,” she replied.

“Good,” he said. “I’ll let you know when we’re ready to go to the castle.”

He could have imagined the pained look in her eyes as he turned to leave, but she called out when he made it to the door.

“Q, I’m sorry,” she said.

Without turning around, he replied, “Yeah, me too.”

When he made it back to the Cottage, he found that only Eliot remained in the common room.

“Where’s everyone else?” he asked.

“Margo is gone to talk to some woman about the castle, and I don’t know where Julia, Kady, and Penny got off to,” he explained. “There’s some seriously weird energy in that trio.”

Quentin laughed as he made his way over to where Eliot was lounging on the sofa. He sat down, automatically folding himself into Eliot’s side, and sighed.

“Why didn’t you go with Margo?” he asked.

Eliot wrapped an arm around him and replied, “I wanted to wait for you. Did you get the siphon?”

“Yep,” Quentin replied.

“That’s my boy,” Eliot said, exaggerating his fond tone, which made Quentin elbow him in the side as he laughed.

Quentin grinned and looked up at him. Eliot was giving him a warm smile in return, so he sat up enough to reach up and give him a kiss. Eliot melted into it, wrapping his hand around Quentin’s neck to hold him in place. 

“I can’t believe I’ve never made out with you on this couch before,” Eliot mumbled. “It’s literally all I thought about when we first met.”

“Really?” Quentin asked him.

He leaned back, lowering himself down onto the cushions while Eliot followed. Eliot nodded and said, “During all those Cottage parties, when you’d sit in the corner like a wallflower talking to Alice, I was thinking about what would happen if I were to walk over and do this.”

Eliot leaned in to kiss him again, and Quentin sighed as he pressed his tongue inside to slide it against his own. His hands found their way to Eliot’s hair, and one of them slipped down to rake up his shirt up his back.

“I think it probably would have gone a little like this,” he breathed as they separated.

Eliot hummed against his neck, trailing his lips along it gently.

“I was so into you,” Quentin went on. He was aware he was babbling a little bit, but he honestly couldn’t summon a single fuck to give, and wasn’t that nice for once? He said, “From the first time I saw you, I wanted you. I just never thought that you’d want _me_.”

Eliot bit down on his neck with just enough pressure to hurt before soothing it with his tongue, and Quentin dug his fingers into his curls in response. Eliot said, “Fuck, Q. Why did we waste so much time?”

Quentin rolled his hips up to meet Eliot’s and found it somewhere in his distracted brain to feel a little powerful at the way Eliot responded, moaning into his skin like he couldn’t help himself. 

“Well, we’re here now,” he replied.

Eliot answered him with another kiss, and Quentin had a feeling they weren’t going to be getting anything productive done while the others were away.

Later on, after they’d moved to Eliot’s room in the Cottage and settled in for the night, Eliot was sleeping soundly next to him while Quentin stared at the ceiling. Margo had come back and explained what she’d found out, after she got through telling them off for having sex on the sofa where she had to sit.

Apparently the Castle at the End of the World was an exact replica of Whitespire. Quentin had seen it theorized about on message boards before, of course, and apparently Margo had too. Castle Blackspire. The only piece of new information was that it was located literally underneath Fillory like some kind of alternate hell dimension. Margo told them that it was designed by Calypso and designated by Prometheus to hold the backdoor to magic, in case it was ever needed by the humans. It was the final destination of their whole quest, and they just had to figure out how they were going to pull off the grand finale now that they knew where it was.

The problem was that the castle itself was a classic paradox. It required the seven keys to enter, but the keys were also required to turn magic back on. There had to be a work around though. The gods wouldn’t have designed a quest that couldn't be finished. So overall, it just didn’t make sense. 

He’d been thinking about all of that for a good hour while he stared at Eliot’s ceiling. They knew there was something inside the castle, thanks to various ominous warnings from others. Something terrible if the Eliot from timeline 23 was to be believed. That was what ultimately gave Quentin an idea though. It was just a theory, but he happened to have the means to test it.

So, he checked that Eliot was still sleeping and carefully slid out of bed. He walked down the hallway to his own room because no one was likely to disturb him there, but he still locked the door for good measure. Then he sat down at his desk and closed his eyes.

Even with Julia’s magic, it took a little while for him to figure out how to do the spell. He wasn’t psychic, so astral projecting wasn’t exactly something he was experienced with. It felt a little like the one time Julia had convinced him to take some questionable drugs with her at a high school party and he swore he’d traveled to another dimension. Turns out he’d mostly just passed out on the stairs until James had dragged the two of them back home, but that was beside the point. The sensation was similar as he felt himself literally leave his own body behind and shift his awareness into the mind of someone else. He looked around carefully, only slightly concerned that he’d miscalculated and ended up inside the mind of a monster. He was relieved though to see what appeared to be a normal looking girl sleeping inside a dimly lit castle. 

Gently, he said, “Hey.”

The girl jumped, and he held out his hand. He said, “Hey, it’s okay. You’re dreaming, and I’m speaking to you inside your mind right now. My name is Quentin. Are you inside Castle Blackspire?”

The girl slowly sat up as she nodded at him before frantically looking over both of her shoulders.

“It can’t be left alone,” she muttered. “I need to find it.”

“It?” Quentin asked.

“The monster,” she answered dully, turning to look at him like he might be stupid. 

That’s when he realized he’d been right. If there was a jail full of terrible things, there had to be a jailer, and it seemed like he’d managed to find her on the first try.

“Listen to me,” he said, “we don’t have much time, and I need to know how to get inside the castle. My friends and I have the keys, but we can’t use them to open the door.”

Realization dawned on her face, and she said, “You’re looking for the back door to magic.”

Quentin nodded.

“Yeah, we are,” he said, “and I was hoping you could help us get inside the castle so that we can get to it.”

She shook her head regretfully as she replied, “I’m sorry, but I made a promise. What’s inside this castle can’t be allowed to escape. I can’t let you inside; it’s too risky.”

Quentin chewed on the inside of his cheek as he looked at the girl. She was young, probably younger than him by a few years at least. She’d likely been there for millenia though, left to guard the gods’ mistakes through no fault of her own except her own bravery. It was like a life sentence but worse, because her life never ended. Quentin had to admire that, in a way. She was dedicated to her mission, and she wasn’t going to give it up even though she clearly wanted to help. She had to be tired though. Anyone would be in her shoes. 

The idea quickly forming in his mind wasn’t a good one by any stretch of the imagination. It wasn’t like they had a lot of options though, and this was the only chance they’d likely get to negotiate, even if he was the only one who knew they were doing it. Ideally he would have had more time to think it over and come up with a plan with the others. He didn’t have that luxury though. It was now or never. Make a decision or potentially lose any chance at turning magic back on forever.

So, he spared a second’s thought for how he was going to convince them all that he’d made the right choice. How he’d tell Julia, Margo…Eliot. Eliot was never going to forgive him. 

He forcefully swallowed down that thought, deciding to deal with it later on, and then he asked the girl, “What’s your name?”

“Ora,” she replied tentatively.

“Okay, Ora,” he said, leaning forward. “What if I offered you something in return for letting us inside the castle?”

She looked at him appraisingly for a moment before sighing lightly and said, “I’m listening.”


End file.
